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U.N.'s last-minute Iran invitation throws Syria talks into doubt

20 January 2014 20:55 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. An unexpected last-minute U.N. invitation for Iran to a peace conference on Syria threw the talks into doubt on Monday, with Washington demanding Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon withdraw his offer and the Syrian opposition threatening to pull out, APA repors quoting Reuters.

Iran is the main foreign backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its presence has been one of the most contentious issues looming over the first talks to be attended by both Assad's government and opponents.

The talks are set to start on Wednesday in Switzerland but diplomats said the entire conference was now in jeopardy.

"Is Geneva going to happen? That is the question we can't answer at the moment," a Western diplomat said.

After the clamorous response to his invitation, Ban said "intensive and urgent" discussions were under way.

Adding to dark clouds, Assad said he might seek re-election this year, effectively dismissing any talk of negotiating his departure from power, his enemies' main demand.

The West and the Syrian opposition have long said Iran must be barred from the conference unless it first accepts an accord reached in Geneva in 2012 calling for a transitional government for Syria, which they see as a step towards unseating Assad.

Ban said he had issued the invitation after Iran's foreign minister assured him Tehran accepted the earlier accord. But Iran said it had done no such thing and had accepted Ban's invitation "without pre-conditions" - the phrase it has long used to spurn the earlier accord.

That put Western countries on a collision course with the United Nations: "If Iran does not fully and publicly accept the Geneva communiqué, the invitation must be rescinded," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Syria's main political opposition in exile - the National Coalition, which agreed to attend the conference known as Geneva 2 only two days ago - said it would announce it was withdrawing from the talks unless Ban revoked his invitation within hours.

"We are giving a deadline of 1900 GMT for the invitation to be withdrawn," Anas Abdah, a member of the National Coalition's political committee, told Reuters.