DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) – The opposing sides will not initially meet face-to-face in planned Syria peace talks in Geneva next week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Thursday, a sign that obstacles remain in the latest diplomatic push to end the conflict.
The first U.N.-brokered meeting in the Swiss city will be “proximity talks” in which representatives of the government and opposition will gather separately, Kerry said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The talks are tentatively planned to take place Monday, but diplomats say that could slip by up to a few days.
The cautious, step-by-step approach points to the delicate task faced by U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who is eager to make concrete progress toward ending the nearly five-year-old war that has claimed more than 250,000 lives, displaced millions and given an opening to the extremist Islamic State group to seize land.
The intra-Syrian talks also come against the backdrop of a string of recent battlefield victories by the government that have bolstered President Bashar Assad’s hand and plunged the rebels into disarray, raising the prospect that the Geneva talks could become moot as the situation on the ground evolves.
“You are not going to have a situation where people are sitting down at the table staring at each other or shouting at each other,” Kerry. “You’re going to have to build some process here.”