Riyadh hosts a meeting for Syrian opposition to discuss Assad fate

A series of rescheduled meetings among the Syrian warring parties launched on Monday. The meetings were postponed as the Russian-sponsored representatives failed to arrive on time to the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

The tripartite bringing together the Syrian High Negotiations Committee, the Cairo-backed delegation and representatives supported by Moscow will tackle the Syrian crisis, especially the future of Syrian regime head Bashar al Assad.

After producing a uniform Syrian opposition delegation, the group will then participate at the upcoming Geneva talks. Syrian opposition sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that a compromise may be proposed, which is that Assad will remain in power for a period of six months before holding presidential elections.

In context, the HNC spokesman Salem al-Musalla said that the meetings will end by naming opposition representatives that would be sent to the Geneva negotiations. “Until now, the dispute between us and Moscow-backed platform over the fate of Assad is still unresolved, but we are counting on a change in the Russian position,” opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi told Asharq Al-Awsat.

The Moscow-backed delegation had before refused to partake in the Riyadh meetings, but later changed its objections. A change in Russia’s stance is believed to be the reason behind the delegation. The HNC refused for Assad to remain in power even if for a transitional phase. More so, Cairo expressed its objection to Assad or the regime playing any part in Syria’s future.

On the other hand, Qadri Jamil, heading the Moscow-backed delegation suggested keeping Assad in power and appointing five deputies. The proposal found no approval among opposition forces. Salim al-Musallat, in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat, reaffirmed that the HNC rejects Assad or the old regime playing any part in Syria’s future, or the transitional period.

Musallat says that the difference among opposition representatives is over the timing of Assad’s departure, whether it would take place at the beginning or at the end of the interim government. On the other hand, Al-Aridi said that the HNC is acting responsibly and opening the door to all other parties in order to bring views closer and form a single delegation while safeguarding principles of the revolution and persistence.

Five people were reported dead Sunday when a rocket hit near an international trade fair in Syria's capital Damascus being held for the first time in five years. The Damascus International Fair was once the leading event on Syria's economic calendar but had not been held since shortly after the outbreak of the country's war in March 2011.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor of the war, said five people were killed and around a dozen more injured in the rocket fire near the entrance to the fair. A source at a hospital in Jaramana, an area southwest of the capital, told AFP he had seen dead and injured evacuated from the scene.

A Facebook page that tracks fire on the capital reported four people killed and four others injured in the incident. There was no confirmation of the toll from officials, and no mention of the incident on Syria's state news agency SANA. Syrian state television briefly carried a breaking news alert reporting the rocket fire and saying it had caused injuries, citing its reporters on the scene.

But the alert was removed shortly afterwards, and a reporter broadcasting live from the fair interviewed several officials who made no mention of the rocket fire or casualties. "We were preparing to receive visitors when I heard an explosion... then I saw smoke to the side of the of the entrance to the exhibition hall," 39-year-old Iyad al-Jabiri, a Syrian working at a textile stand at the fair, told AFP.

The fair opened on Thursday at the capital's Exhibition City and is scheduled to last 10 days. It was touted as a sign that work towards rebuilding Syria and revitalising its ravaged economy was getting underway, despite the violence that continues in parts of the country.

Its general director, Fares al-Kartally, said the decision to hold it this year was a result of "the return of calm and stability in most regions" of Syria. "We want this fair to signal the start of (the country's) reconstruction," Kartally told AFP earlier this week.

While Damascus has been insulated from much of the worst violence of the country's war, several key rebel enclaves remain in the Eastern Ghouta region outside the city. Fighters in the area have regularly fired rockets into the capital, and government warplanes have frequently carried out devastating raids across Eastern Ghouta.

In recent weeks, much of the area has been quieter after the implementation in July of a "de-escalation zone" covering parts of Eastern Ghouta. The trade fair dates back to 1954 but was last held in the summer of 2011, months after the eruption of protests against President Bashar al-Assad's government.

Since then, the country has spiralled into a bloody civil war that has killed over 330,000 people, displaced millions and devastated the economy. The fair is hosting firms from 23 countries that have maintained diplomatic relations with Damascus throughout the conflict.

The United States and European countries, which maintain economic sanctions on the Assad regime, were not officially invited, although a handful of Western companies are attending on an individual basis. Syria's government has seized large parts of the country from rebels and jihadists in recent months and talk has begun to turn to reconstruction and even the reestablishment of ties with Western nations.

But Assad said Sunday that countries seeking to resume ties or reopen their embassies must end their support for Syria's rebels. "We are not isolated like they think, it's their arrogance that pushes them to think in this manner," he said in a speech to members of Syria's diplomatic corps broadcast on state television.

"There will be neither security cooperation, nor the opening of embassies, nor a role for certain states that say they want to find a way out (of Syria's war), unless they explicitly cut their ties with terrorism," he added.