Following intense American pressure and a boycott threat from Syrian Opposition, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has rescinded the invitation to Iran for the peace conference on Syria beginning in the Swiss resort city of Montreux on Wednesday.
Ban’s about-turn late Monday of a surprise invitation that he had announced less than 24 hours earlier came in for criticism from Russia and Iran itself. Moscow commented that the “unseemly” cancellation “hasn’t helped strengthen the UN authority”. The UN Chief’s action, however, lifted the uncertainty on whether the conference would go through because of US indications that it would pull out if Iran attended the meet. Syria’s Western-backed Opposition coalition had already issued a boycott threat.
About 40 countries are set to attend the conference in Montreux, followed by the first face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian Government and the Opposition.
The talks aim at ending Syria’s three-year civil war that has killed more than 1,30,000 and uprooted millions. While announcing reversal of the invitation, Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said the Secretary-General was “disappointed” by Iranian public statements earlier on Monday rejecting acceptance of the terms set out in the earlier Geneva communique in June 2012 that mooted establishing a transitional governing body in Syria.
“He (Ban) continues to urge Iran to join the global consensus behind the Geneva Communique. Given that it has chosen to remain outside that basic understanding, he has decided that the one-day Montreux gathering will proceed without Iran’s participation,” Nesirsky said in a statement. In the light of the UN chief’s reversal that was preceded by lobbying by Secretary of State John Kerry, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said “all parties can now return to focus on the task at hand, which is bringing an end to the suffering of the Syrian people and beginning a process toward a long-overdue political transition”.
Although the US-Iran faceoff over Syria continued unabated, the US and European Union, in a separate development, began easing some of the economic sanctions against Tehran following the Iranian announcement of suspension of certain nuclear activities as agreed to under the recent deal with western powers. The Iranian move was confirmed by International Atomic Energy Agency on Monday. Under the deal, Iran was required to cease enrichment of uranium above 5 per cent, begin the process of diluting some of its stockpile of 20 per cent enriched uranium and verify that it has not installed additional centrifuges at two key nuclear facilities.
The White House said in a statement that while following through the commitment to extend modest relief to Tehran in return for concrete actions, the US and other world powers would “continue our aggressive enforcement of the sanctions measures that will remain in place throughout this six-month period”.