Syria’s warring sides meet under world’s gaze

Syria’s government and opposition, meeting for the first time at a UN peace conference, angrily spelled out their hostility today as world powers also offered sharply divergent views on forcing out Bashar al-Assad.

Opposition leader Ahmed Jarba accused the president of Nazi-style war crimes and demanded the Syrian government delegation at the one-day meeting in Switzerland immediately sign up to an international plan for handing over power.

Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem insisted Assad would not bow to outside demands and painted a graphic picture of “terrorist” rebel atrocities supported by Arab and Western states who back the opposition and were present in the room.

The country’s information minister said Assad will not step down, as demanded by some of the international powers seeking to end the country’s protracted conflict. “Assad isn’t going,” Omaran Zoabi told journalists .

The United States and Russia, co-sponsors of the conference which UN officials hope will lead to negotiations in Geneva from Friday, also revealed their differences over Assad during a day of formal presentations at Montreux on Lake Geneva.

The talks reflect mounting global concern that a war which has killed over 130,000 and left millions homeless is spilling beyond Syria and fuelling sectarian militancy abroad.

But there was little sign that any party was ready to make concessions. US Secretary of State John Kerry echoed the rebel view that there is "no way" Assad can stay under the terms of a 2012 international accord calling for an interim coalition.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said all sides must have a role and criticised "one-sided interpretations" of that 2012 pact.

Saudi Arabia, which backs the Sunni rebels, called for Iran and its Shia Lebanese ally Hezbollah to withdraw forces from Syria.

Iran, locked in a sectarian confrontation across the region, was absent, shunned by the opposition and the West for rejecting calls for a transitional government.

Its president said Tehran’s exclusion meant talks were unlikely to succeed. The conference has raised no great expectations, particularly among Islamist rebels who have branded Western-backed opposition leaders as traitors for even agreeing to be in the same room as Assad’s delegates.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened proceedings at Montreux by calling for immediate access for humanitarian aid convoys to areas under siege. "After nearly three painful years of conflict and suffering in Syria, today is a day of fragile but real hope," Mr Ban said, condemning a record of human rights abuses across the board.

He urged both sides in Syria to reach a full settlement based on the 2012 UN Geneva Communique, under which world powers called for a transitional government.

“Great challenges lie ahead but they are not insurmountable,” he added.

For all the low expectations on Lake Geneva, millions of Syrians in refugee camps hope something will change. “Let them please find a solution for this problem,” Mohammed from Homs said at a UN centre in Lebanon. “Let us go home.”

Agencies