Opposition leaders show up to Syrian peace talks

GENEVA – After days of delay and rampant uncertainty, representatives of the major Syrian opposition group arrived in Geneva on Saturday for peace talks convened by the United Nations and backed by major powers, including the United States.

“We came here to test the regime’s intentions,” said Monzer Makhous, a spokesman for the coalition known as the High Negotiations Committee, upon arriving in the Swiss city where the talks opened Friday without opposition representation.

Still, it remained unclear whether negotiations would actually take place under a broad international effort to end the almost 5-year-old Syrian conflict. So far, the process has been mired in ambiguity.

The Saudi-Arabia-based committee, an umbrella group of armed Syrian factions and political dissidents, had threatened to boycott the talks if the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad did not meet certain preconditions, including halting the bombardment and sieges of rebel-held areas.

On Friday, the committee confirmed that it would send a contingent to Geneva but said it would only meet with the U.N. and not negotiate with Syrian government officials.

Representatives of the Syrian government arrived in Geneva on Friday and met at U.N. headquarters with Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria and chief mediator for the talks.

The sessions here already had been defined as “proximity talks,” in which the different sides would remain in separate rooms while U.N. officials shuttled between them. U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has said having opposing groups staring or shouting at each other across a table would not be productive.

The Syrian talks originally were set to begin last Monday but were pushed back to Friday amid uncertainty about who would represent the fragmented Syrian opposition, which ranges from hardcore Islamist fighters to peaceful secular dissidents inside and outside Syria.

Russia, a key ally of the Assad government, has objected to the participation of some members of the Saudi-based opposition coalition.

Since September, Russian air power has helped turn the tide of battle in favor of the government, which has made significant advances in the run-up to the Geneva talks.

The talks here follow two rounds of negotiations that collapsed in 2014.