Iran debate highlights hitch in Syrian talks

A delegation of Syrian opposition leaders heads to Switzerland today to join peace talks after the United Nations agreed to their demand that an invitation to Iran should be withdrawn.

Iran and Russia, Syria's closest allies, criticised the UN decision, with Iran saying UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had bowed to pressure. The Syrian opposition hailed it as a victory.

"This was a triumph for the coalition's diplomacy and the credibility of the international community," Soner Ahmed, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, the main Syrian political opposition, said by phone today from Istanbul. A private jet will fly 15 delegates representing the rebels later on Tuesday, Ahmed said.

The dispute over Iran's attendance threatened to unravel the conference, the first face-to-face meeting between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Since then more than 100,000 people have died and more than 2 million have fled the country, the UN says.

Syria's opposition said it would withdraw from the talks if Iran attended, saying the country has troops in Syria and is supporting pro-government militias.

Ban was "deeply disappointed" that Iran reneged on private assurances that it supports the goal of the 39-nation international peace conference - scheduled to open tomorrow in Montreux, Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters on Monday in New York.

The rebels, the US and France said that participants at the talks must accept the conclusions of the so-called Geneva I talks in 2012, which included Russia. That communique called on the Syrian regime and opposition to establish a transitional government chosen "by mutual consent."

Speaking on Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said his country won't take part in the talks "given the US insistence to set a pre-condition," according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Iran accepted no pre-conditions during talks with Ban last week, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters on Tuesday, the state-run Fars news agency reported.

"We regret that Ban rescinded his invitation under pressure and we don't see this action as being in line with a secretary-general," Zarif said.

Russia also criticised the UN decision. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a press conference that rescinding the Iranian invitation was a mistake.

Different goals
"All outside players who have influence in Syria should be represented at the conference," Lavrov said.

The latest disagreements underscore the pessimism surrounding the talks to stop Syria's civil war.

The two main Syrian sides are going to the talks with different goals. The opposition wants the negotiations to yield a transitional government with full powers and that Assad be denied any role. The government doesn't see the transitional body as replacing Assad and wants him to be part of the process as head of state.

Syria's conflict has evolved into a civil war pitting largely Sunni rebels against the government of Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Major oil producers, Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran, have been drawn into the conflict, with each country supporting its co-religionists.

Meanwhile, Sunni extremist groups, some of them affiliated with al-Qaeda and the uprising in neighbouring Iraq's Anbar province, have assumed a larger military role, prompting Assad and his allies to portray the uprising as a war against terrorism.