The Syrian National Coalition would attend the Geneva 2 peace conference if it aims to set up a transitional government with full powers, the coalition's president Ahmad Jarba said in a letter to the UN Security Council.
In the September 19 letter obtained by Reuters, Jarba said the
coalition "reaffirms its willingness to engage in a future
Geneva Conference" but "all parties must...agree that the
purpose of the conference will be the establishment of a
transitional government with full executive powers" as
stipulated by an agreement hammered out by international powers
last year.
The letter represented the first clear commitment from the coalition, which has been viewed by several Western and Arab states as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, to attend the proposed conference sponsored by the United States and Russia.
Jarba had earlier appeared less amenable towards a diplomatic solution, having urged the Security Council earlier this week to adopt a resolution under Chapter 7 of the UN charter allowing the use of force to cripple the Syrian government’s "war machine."
In a speech delivered from Istanbul and broadcast by Al-Arabiya,
Jarba said "ending the killing of Syrian people is only
possible by stopping the regime's war machine and barring it from
using its aviation, missiles and artillery, and depriving it of
its chemical weapons."
Jarba continued that a resolution under Chapter 7 "paves
the way to a solution to the Syrian crisis... that would lead to
a democratic regime that will rebuild Syria."
He further accused the international community of "keeping
silent on the crimes of the regime", saying this attitude had
emboldened Damascus to deploy chemical weapons.
On July 26, the Syrian National Coalition said it would refuse to partake in the Geneva 2 peace conference as long as Assad did not vow beforehand to stay out of the envisioned transitional government.
The August 21 chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb which
killed anywhere between 281 and 1,729 people appeared to
derail chances for the Middle East Peace conference.Washington
blamed the attack on Damascus, while the Assad government said
opposition fighters were behind the strike.
However, following three days of negotiations between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and his US counterpart John Kerry last Saturday in Geneva, the diplomats hammered out a plan to put Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles under international control.
The so-called Geneva accord appeared to neutralize the threat of
outside intervention in the conflict, which Lavrov had previously
said would kill the chances of the proposed peace conference
going forward.
After speaking with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on Tuesday, Lavrov reiterated that a UN Security Council resolution intended to compel Syria to follow through with the Russia-US plan would not refer to Chapter 7.
“The [opposition] National Coalition vocally opposed the
Russian-American plan to destroy Syrian chemical weapons… because
they were expecting that the problem would be solved through a
military intervention. And they were disappointed after the
intervention failed to materialize and the issue went to the
strictly diplomatically-legal framework,” Lavrov said.
He asked the Western backers of the Syrian opposition to use
their leverage to force them to participate in the peace
conference.