MOSCOW,— Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday insisted that UN-backed Syria talks planned to start later this week will not be successful if Kurdish representatives are not invited.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura was due to send out invites Tuesday to opposition groups to attend the talks after negotiations were delayed several days to Friday due to a “stalemate” over the makeup of the delegations.

Lavrov said that one of the international powers backing the Syria talks — most likely meaning Turkey — was objecting to the participation of the Kurds and the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in particular.

“Without this party, without this participant the talks cannot achieve the results that we want, a definitive political resolution in Syria,” Lavrov told journalists at his main annual press conference.

Lavrov said, however, that Russia would not “veto” the talks if the Kurds were not invited and that it was up to the UN envoy de Mistura to decide which opposition groups would be asked to attend.

Turkey, which has condemned the PYD, has said that it wants to see some Syrian Kurds “around the table” at the talks.

Turkey considers the PYD and its military wing YPG to be the Syrian offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has took up arms in 1984 against the Turkish state, which still denies the constitutional existence of Kurds, to push for greater autonomy for the Kurdish minority who make up around 22.5 million of the country’s 78-million population, in Turkish Kurdistan.

The powerful Kurdish forces of People’s Protection Units YPG force in Syrian Kurdistan, which the U.S. and Russia consider an ally in the fight against Islamic State, is  the most effective group fighting IS in Syria, as the Kurdish militia has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.

Last month, several key opposition bodies, including rebel groups, formed a coalition known as the High Negotiations Committee to participate in the mooted talks.

But the coalition excludes the strongest Kurdish party the PYD of Syrian Kurdistan and a range of other opposition figures.

In October 2015, Russia said does not consider the PKK and its affiliate in Syrian Kurdistan, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), as terrorist groups.

Russia President Vladimir Putin said last September no one but Assad’s forces and Kurds are fighting Islamic State.

Ties between Russia and Turkey are in tatters over the shooting down last year of one of Moscow’s jets by Ankara along its border with Syria.

Russia has been running a bombing campaign in Syria since last September in support of its longstanding ally President Bashar al-Assad, who is fiercely opposed by Turkey.

Syrian Kurds have established three autonomous zones, or “cantons” in 2013, and Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava). Nearly 3 million Kurds live in Syrian Kurdistan.

Speaking of the Syrian Kurds, U.S. policy advisor, and former United States diplomat Peter Galbraith notes that in his trip to that region, he noticed that “they have gone from being rebels in charge of an area to having many more attributes of a government.”

Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, AFP | Ekurd.net

Related posts:

Can Syria’s Kurds Leverage War Gains Into Political Autonomy? Business with ISIS – Updated Kurd Autonomy: Is it Kerry’s Plan B or Putin’s Plan A? Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Godfather of Kurdistan? Interview with co-chair of Syria Democratic Council Ilham Ahmad Analyzing Russia’s Involvement in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region’s Energy Sector Turkey: Nato’s Islamic State Member Letter to Russian president Putin over Turkish invasion of Syria’s Kurdish Afrin