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Delegates arrive for trilateral meeting on Syria in Geneva

13 February 2014 18:19 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Delegates arrived Thursday afternoon at Palais des Nations, the location of United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG), for a trilateral meeting between United Nations, Russia and the United States amid the ongoing Syria peace talks held here, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

Senior officials attending the meeting include UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Gennady Gatilov and U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman.

The UN-Russia-U.S.trilateral meeting was brought one day earlier than the original scheduled date Friday.

After the first round of Geneva II conference, initiated by Moscow and Washington, adjourned some ten days ago without concrete achievement, the second round resumed on Monday but witnessed little progress so far.

Brahimi, the mediator for the peace talks, met with Gatilov before he met with delegations of Syrian government and the opposition "simultaneously" on Wednesday.

It was reported that the meeting between the senior Russia diplomat and the special envoy involved discussions over the agenda, priorities of negotiations, and measures to bring the ongoing round of Geneva II conference forward.

Delegations of Syrian government and the opposition still haven't find common ground during the current round of talks, with no side softening their tones.

The government side insisted to take stopping violence and terrorism as top priority, while the opposition focused on the establishment of a transitional governing body with full executives and without the presence of President Bashar al-Assad.

In an effort to solve the sticking point, Brahimi, the mediator for the peace talks, noted earlier that he suggested the two sides in a memorandum sent by himself to them in advance of this fresh round of talks to discuss the two issues in parallel, saying that "they are both important matters." However, it seemed that so far the talks did not witness progress in this regard.

The opposition side said on Wednesday that at the moment they haven't scheduled any talks at the trilateral meeting.