AFP Beirut, 27 January 2017 – UN-hosted negotiations on the Syrian conflict planned for February 8 in Geneva have been postponed until the end of that month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday. “The date of February 8 has been put back until the end of next month,” Lavrov told a meeting with minor Syrian opposition representatives in Moscow to discuss peace talks in Kazakhstan that ended on Tuesday without a major breakthrough.
There was no confirmation from the United Nations on the latest plans for the next round of talks between the Syrian regime and opposition. The main opposition groups stayed away from the Moscow meeting with Lavrov, as the Kremlin seeks to impose its influence as the key powerbroker in Syria on the back of its game-changing military support for leader Bashar al-Assad.

Opposition turns down invitation

It was earlier reported that Syria’s main opposition leaders on Thursday turned down an invitation from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks in Moscow. High Negotiations Committee spokesman Riyad Naasan said that HNC coordinator Riyad Hijab had “received a personal invitation” to attend Friday’s talks “but declined”. But “no invitation has yet been sent to the High Negotiations Committee”, he added.
The HNC is the main Syrian opposition umbrella group and has taken part in peace talks brokered by Syria regime allies Russia and Iran and rebel backer Turkey in the Kazakh capital, Astana, this week.
The Turkey-based opposition National Coalition also declined to meet with Lavrov, said spokesman Ahmad Ramadan. He said invitations were sent to the current and past heads of the National Coalition and to the deputy of the sitting chief.
On Wednesday Lavrov told Russian lawmakers that he had invited “all the opposition representatives from the political opposition that wish to come to Moscow” for talks on Friday. He said “we will brief them about what happened in Astana”.
The peace talks in the Kazakh capital ended on Tuesday without a major breakthrough. Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed in Astana to establish a joint “mechanism” to shore up a shaky three-week truce in Syria, but offered few concrete details on how it would work.