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Conflict in Syria

Russian foreign minister, Syrian oppositionist discuss Assad’s destiny

No one in the world thinks Syria will in the future have the same system of administration it has now, with Assad in power, a representative of the Cairo conference follow-up committee says

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad TASS/EPA/SANA

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad

© TASS/EPA/SANA

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Keeping status quo in Syria is unacceptable — Lavrov

MOSCOW, August 14. /TASS/. A system of state power that took shape in Syria during Bashar al-Assad’s rule should see changes in the future, Haitham Mana’a, a representative of the Cairo conference follow-up committee said on Friday after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

He said the destiny of President Assad was one of the issues under discussion with Lavrov.

"No one in the world thinks Syria will in the future have the same system of administration it has now, with Bashar Assad in power," Mana’a said answering a question by TASS. "As for now, we’re beginning with the people we have around us."

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As he spoke about the prospects for the Geneva-3 conference on ending hostilities in Syria, Mana’a said the conference as such was a single-day event but there was also a Geneva process and work was to be done within its format, too.

"The Geneva process should be a process," he added.

Another representative of the Cairo follow-up committee, Jihad Makdissi, told TASS the negotiators had discussed a roadmap for peace settlement in Syria.

The conversation at the Foreign Ministry was held in the context of the documents drafted by the Syrian participants during the conference in Cairo, and the discussions embraced the roadmap, a national charter, as well as resumption of the process of the Geneva communique implementation so that we could get over to a political transitional period in Syria."

"Our interlocutors welcomed the results of the Cairo conference and our committee’s efforts," Makdissi said. "That’s far from the first meeting and we’re maintaining contacts with Russia so as to see how Moscow could influence the Syrian authorities to step up the political dialogue and activities in line with the Geneva communique."

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