By Vestnik Kavkaza
A meeting of representatives of the Syrian government and the opposition will take place in late January 2015 in Moscow. It will continue for four days, a source in the Foreign Ministry of Russia told RIA Novosti. According to the source, representatives of a broad spectrum of the Syrian opposition will be invited to the Moscow meeting. If the conflicting sides are gathered to talk, it will be another victory for Moscow in the international arena.
Andrei Baklanov, ambassador, advisor to the deputy chairman of the Federation Council, has recently returned from Damascus. He says that the Syrian authorities’ attitude has seriously changed, and now they are sure that sooner or later they will win: “The last time we were there – in 2011 – riots of the armed opposition had only just begun, and the Syrians looked confused. At the moment during talks or visiting Damascus, even though military clashes are taking place at few dozen kilometers away, the situation is different. All facilities are working, there is no haste, people are calm. President Assad is very optimistic and speaks about the future confidently.”
The expert notes that, despite the war, the Syrian state and society have adapted to the situation and function in an almost normal regime: “The Syrian authorities control 65% of the population of the country. They have become used to living in the new situation. Small commodity production enables the problem of supplies to be solved. They live better than could have been imagined after three years of the bloody war.”
Baklanov says that positive changes have happened in Syria, which encourage consolidation around the President: “They believe that the authorities have become stronger, the authorities have consolidated, the President was re-elected… If we start the negotiation process today, we should consider this attitude.”
According to the ambassador, the appointment of the new UN special envoy on Syria, Staffan de Mistura, has opened new prospects for a normalization of the situation: “De Mistura is positively different from the two other UN special envoys who used to work in the region. I have never hidden my bad attitude toward the professional skills of Brahimi and Kofi Annan. They were useless. Brahimi had smart advisors, but didn’t execute smartly what they recommended to him. As for Kofi Annan, he failed in the Iraqi campaign, and it was ridiculous. The situation is different with de Mistura. His first steps are much more thoughtful. The Syrians received him seriously. They see common grounds in their own approaches and de Mistura’s ones. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but the beginning is promising.”
Andrei Baklanov stresses that the Syrians blame the U.S. for the troubles in the country: “The Syrians believe that Islamic State is used by cynical people who are connected with the West and the U.S. It is a kind of conspiracy syndrome, but they see a lot of evidence that this is a new American toy. According to our Syrian colleagues and colleagues from other countries, they have set themselves up for a long oppositional war of attrition. Attempts by the Americans to use the unstable situation are attempts to play the main role in the political dialogue, military-technical cooperation and use this to strengthen their positions.”
Assurance that the Americans caused the civil war in Syria have led to the formation of a special mentality in Syria. “Syrian colleagues with whom we met told us that they were proud that the American scenarios began to fail in Syria,” Baklanov stated.
