DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – The Syrian government and moderate opposition groups have agreed to start drafting new constitutional provisions during renewed United Nations-mandated negotiations in Geneva this week.
“The two co-chairs now agree that we will not only prepare for constitutional reform, but we will prepare and start drafting the constitutional reform,” UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen said at a brief news conference on Sunday.
The drafting committee is comprised of 45 members from the Syrian government, opposition, and civil society. They have not met since last January.
“We concluded that we were not making sufficient progress, and that we could not continue the way we have been working,” Pedersen said. “Since then, close to nine months, I’ve been negotiating between the parties, trying to establish a consensus on how we are going to move forward.”
The delegations arrived in Geneva and held preliminary discussions with Pedersen before a series of talks over the week.
At a Russia-hosted Syrian peace conference in Sochi in January 2018, an agreement was reached to form a 150-member committee to draft a new constitution until September 2019, equally represented by the Syrian government, political opposition, and civil society.
A smaller committee of 45 individuals of that same proportion is tasked with negotiating and drafting the new constitutional provisions.
The fifth and most recent round of meetings aimed at revising the constitution was held in January this year with the participation of delegates from various sides.
Since 2011, Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy, leading to the emergence of Daesh and other terrorist groups in the Arab country.
The Syrian government has repeatedly condemned the U.S. and the EU for waging economic terrorism on the country through their unilateral sanctions, holding them responsible for the suffering of the Syrian people, especially now that the country is grappling with a deadly coronavirus outbreak.
Damascus has also been critical of the United Nations for keeping silent on the destructive role of the U.S. and EU, among other parties supporting terrorism in Syria.