MOSCOW, April 8. /TASS/. Talks on Syria should involve all ethnic groups living in the country and not only the official Damascus and the opposition’s Riyadh group, Rodi Osman, the Syrian Kurdistan envoy to Russia told TASS on Friday.
"We think that these should not be two-way negotiations - between the official Damascus and the opposition group set up in Riyadh. The representatives of all the ethnic groups living in Syria should take part in the talks. They should discuss the creation of a social and political union so that the rights of no ethnic group are violated," Osman said.
Osman reminded that UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said on March 12 that he supported the participation of the Kurds in the Geneva talks, but this did not lead to their inclusion in the negotiations. "Now de Mistura says again that in general he shares the view of Russia’s authorities on the issue of the Kurds participation in the intra-Syrian talks," he said.
Turkey has a destructive influence on the talks, Osman stressed. "The Turkish government is obstructing this (the Kurds participation in negotiations)," he said, adding that the position of the international community on the issue is "very weak."
Western member states in the UN Security Council earlier this week voted to block Russia’s proposal on the all-inclusive nature of the intra-Syrian talks. Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said Moscow repeatedly expressed its concerns that the Syrian Kurds were still not invited to take part in the Geneva talks on the ongoing conflict settlement, adding that "such stance contradicts UN Security Council’s resolutions in the inclusiveness of the political process in Syria.".