Iran disinvited, talks on Syria peace saved

The United Nations Security Council meets at U.N. headquarters, Monday, Jan. 20, 2014. Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Monday morning that he will have more to say on his invitation for Iran to join this week's peace talks on Syria later in the day.(AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
The United Nations Security Council meets at U.N. headquarters, Monday, Jan. 20, 2014. Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Monday morning that he will have more to say on his invitation for Iran to join this week's peace talks on Syria later in the day.(AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)

GENEVA - A last-minute United Nations invitation for Iran to join this week’s Syria peace talks threw the long-awaited Geneva conference into doubt Monday, forcing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to rescind his invitation under intense U.S. pressure after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott.

With the invitation withdrawn, the main Western-backed opposition group said it would attend the talks aimed at ending Syria’s ruinous three-year civil war. The opposition said the conference should seek to establish a transitional government with full executive powers “in which killers and criminals do not participate.”

The surprise invitation, extended Sunday by Ban, set off a flurry of diplomatic activity to salvage the talks. The U.S. said the offer should be rescinded, and the opposition threatened to skip the event.

The conference is set to begin Wednesday in the Swiss luxury resort city of Montreux, with high-ranking delegations from the United States, Russia and close to40 other countries attending. Face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian government and its opponents - the first of the uprising - are to start Friday in Geneva.

The United States welcomed Ban’s decision to rescind his invitation to Iran.

“We are hopeful that, in the wake of today’s announcement, all parties can now return to focus on the task at hand, which is bringing an end to the suffering of the Syrian people and beginning a process toward a long overdue political transition,” State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who is to attend the conference, is said to have been furious and have personally lobbied Ban to rescind the invitation.

The uproar over Iran’s invitation put the entire event at risk of being scuttled.

The Syrian National Coalition, which had voted late Saturday to attend after months of rancorous debate, issued an ultimatum, saying that Iran must commit publicly within hours to withdraw its “troops and militias” from Syria and abide by a 2012 road map to establish a transitional government. Otherwise, the group said, the U.N. should withdraw its invitation for Tehran to take part in the talks.

For his part, Syrian President Bashar Assad said once again Monday that he would not share power with his adversaries or accept the creation of a transitional government.

Assad said in an interview with Agence France-Presse on Monday that the talks in Switzerland should focus on what he called “the war against terrorism” in his country. He described the idea of sharing power as “totally unrealistic,” and said there was a “significant” likelihood that he would seek a new term as president in June.

“I will not hesitate for a second to run for election,” he said. “In short, we can say that the chances for my candidacy are significant.”

The confusion surrounding the Iranian invitation underscored the tenuous nature of the diplomatic effort to end the bloody conflict, which has morphed from peaceful protests into a vicious civil war with outside powers backing rebels who are fighting not only the government but rival insurgents as well.

It is not clear what motivated Ban to issue the invitation, but it came hours after he said he had received assurances from Tehran that it accepted the premise of the talks, set in Geneva in 2012.

The 2012 communique stipulates that the goal of the meeting is the establishment of a transitional administration by “mutual consent” of the Assad government and the Syrian opposition that will write a new constitution and set elections.

Syria has been ruled by Assad’s family since 1970, and Iran is Assad’s strongest regional ally, supplying his government with advisers, money and materiel since the uprising began in 2011. The Islamic Republic’s allies, most notably the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, have also gone to Syria to help bolster Assad’s forces.

The last-minute invitation appeared to take the U.S. and its European allies by surprise.

Also, Ban’s camp appeared taken aback - after the earlier assurances of the acceptance of the 2012 premises of the talks - by an Iranian statement that said Iran had accepted the offer without “any pre-conditions.”

“The secretary-general is deeply disappointed by Iranian public statements today that are not at all consistent with that stated commitment,” said Ban spokesman, Martin Nesirky.

Earlier Monday, senior U.S. officials said Iran had not met the criteria to participate in the conference unless it fully and publicly endorsed the aims of the meeting.

Speaking to reporters in a conference call, the officials said public statements from Iran fell “well short” of what is required for Tehran’s participation, adding that they expected the U.N. to re-evaluate and reverse its decision unless Iran changed course.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter using their names.

France, another strong supporter of the opposition coalition, took the same line, with the country’s U.N. ambassador, Gerard Araud, saying Iran “must accept explicitly” the terms of the road map.

In New York, Russia’s U.N. ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that “of course” both the U.S. and Russia were consulted about the Iran invitation, and he said that if the Syrian opposition boycotted the talks, “that would be a big mistake.”

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, said in Moscow on Monday that leaving Iran out of the talks would be an “unforgivable mistake.”

“Negotiations involve sitting at the table not just with those who you like, but with those whose participation the solution depends on,” Lavrov said at a joint appearance with the foreign minister of Norway.

In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marzieh Afkham was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Iran does not recognize the Geneva road map because it did not attend the conference that drafted it.

Saudi Arabia, a main backer of the Syrian opposition and a bitter regional rival of Tehran, also said Iran was not qualified to attend the conference, but stopped short of threatening to boycott.

The negotiations aim to broker a political resolution to a conflict that has killed more than 130,000 people, displaced millions and put entire towns and neighborhoods under military siege.

Diplomats and political leaders acknowledge that the prospects of achieving such a lofty goal anytime soon are slim at best - with the opposition beset by internal divisions. Infighting between rebels in northern Syria has killed more than 1,000 people in the past month.

Both the government and the opposition have suffered enormous losses, but even now, neither side appears desperate enough to budge from its entrenched position.

Invitations to the one-day meeting of foreign ministers had been subject to approval by the initiating states, Russia and the United States, but the two countries had been at an impasse over Iran.

Syria’s crisis began in the heyday of the Arab Spring uprisings that swept away authoritarian leaders in Egypt,Tunisia and Yemen. Unlike the others, Syria’s leadership responded to largely peaceful protests for political reform with a withering crackdown. That slowly led the opposition to take up arms and gave birth to a civil war that has also spawned a proxy battle between regional Shiite Muslim power Iran and Sunni heavyweight Saudi Arabia.

In other news, talks over the future of Syria and Iran will occur on the sidelines of the annual gathering for political and financial elites in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the founder of the World Economic Forum said Monday.

Klaus Schwab said that there will be crossover between the forum’s 2,500 participants and the officials from the U.S., Russia and close to 40 other countries that are attending the start of the Syria peace conference.

“Here you have some of the true leaders with the influence on the region, so I am sure the results will have an impact on our own discussions,” said Schwab, a German-born economist and engineer who founded the Davos forum in 1971.

Since then, the five-day gathering, which attracts heads of state, royalty and top executives, has grown into a huge networking event.

Iranian leaders’ presence at Davos also coincides with the implementation of the deal agreed to in Geneva that is intended to rein in their nuclear program in exchange for easing sanctions, enabling Iran to pursue new business opportunities, particularly in its oil and gas sector.

But Schwab said it would be too early for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to start negotiating new investments while at the forum. Information for this article was contributed by Ryan Lucas, Zeina Karam, Bassem Mroue, Lori Hinnant, Matthew Lee, John Heilprin and Cara Anna of The Associated Press; by Liz Sly, Anne Gearan and Ahmed Ramadan of The Washington Post; and by Michael R. Gordon,Anne Barnard, Sebnem Arsu, Hwaida Saad, Somini Sengupta, Alan Cowell and Thomas Erdbrink of The New York Times.

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Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/21/2014

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