MOSCOW, April 03. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia, the United States and the United Nations may hold a new trilateral meeting to prepare a third round of Syria talks, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday, April 3.
The agenda of the third round of intra-Syrian talks has been agreed, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
The agenda “envisions discussions of a number of issues: ending violence and counteraction to terrorism, formation of a transitional governing body with participation of Syrian government representatives and various segments of the Syrian political opposition”, Lukashevich said.
He said other issues on the agenda will also include “other tasks resulting from the Geneva Communique of June 30, 2012”.
“The key thing is that agreements should not be imposed, but should be based on mutual consent of the Syrian sides taking part in the talks,” Lukashevich said.
“As regards specific dates for the start of the third round, according to information we have as co-initiators of the international conference on Syria, they have not been defined yet, although work in that direction is now being carried out,” he said.
“A new meeting in the Russia-US-UN tripartite format will probably become an important element of such work,” the spokesman said.
An international peace conference on Syria, dubbed Geneva-2, organized by Russia and the United States, sought to negotiate a solution to the Syrian crisis. No particular progress was reported after two rounds of the conference in January and February 2014. The parties to the Syrian conflict agreed to continue their discussions.
The Geneva Communique was adopted on June 30, 2012 at a conference of an “action group” on Syria in Geneva. That conference is now commonly referred to as “Geneva-1.” Geneva-2 is its logical continuation.
Fighting between Syrian government troops and rebels has left over 100,000 people dead and displaced millions since its start in 2011, according to UN statistics.