The Secretary of the Syrian National Coalition’s political committee, Riad al-Hassan, welcomed the statement of the spokeswoman of the US State Department Morgan Ortagus on the results of the second round of the meetings of the Constitutional Committee. He stressed that the Assad regime’s delegation set preconditions that clearly violate the procedural rules of the Committee’s work.
Al-Hassan said that the regime delegation had agreed at the end of the first session to start discussing the constitutional provisions that were laid out in the opening sessions of the expanded constitutional committee composed of members of the delegations, including members of the regime delegation.
Al-Hassan pointed out that the Assad regime delegation handed the United Nations in the first round an official document containing those provisions and then demanded the UN Envoy to exclude all the political and legal provisions contained in the papers that were prepared by the opposition and civil society delegations from the agenda of the Constitutional Committee.
“The Assad regime delegation afterwards surprisingly proposed that those political provisions which it excluded to be the basis of the discussions of the session,” Hassan said. He added: “This means no doubt that the regime and its security services instructed the delegation to refuse to enter into the discussion of constitutional principles and to continue to stall as it did in the eight rounds of the Geneva talks. The regime also instructed its delegation to avoid engaging in serious negotiations to implement UN Security Council resolutions, especially resolution 2254.
Al-Hassan welcomed the US State Department’s statement that the Constitutional Commitee cannot be the only line of effort of the international community. The statement stressed that other elements of the resolution should be implemented in parallel, including the release of detainees, a nationwide ceasefire, and the creation of a safe, neutral environment for free and, fair elections under United Nations supervision.
Moreover, Al-Hassan stressed that a transitional governing body must be formed with full executive powers to ensure a complete political transition that leads to the removal of the current authoritarian regime.
Al-Hassan called on the international community not to waste the opportunity to launch the work of the Constitutional Committee, describing the committee as a gateway for the implementation of UN resolutions. He also called for ratcheting up pressure on the Assad regime and to continue to isolate it politically until it acquiesces to these resolutions and accepts to implement them as key to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people and reach a real political solution. (Source: Syrian National Coalition’s Media Department)
