Putin, Jordan’s Abdullah talk Syrian peace push

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss developments in the Middle East.

Putin thanked the Jordanian leader for supporting a round of peace talks in Kazakhstan this week. Abdullah, for his part, said Russia’s role was critical in reaching a settlement in Syria, according to Reuters.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will hold talks with officials from Syria’s political opposition on Friday, Moscow said, seeking to reinvigorate efforts for a peace settlement.

The meeting comes after Russian-brokered indirect talks involving the Syrian regime and armed rebel leaders in Kazakhstan ended Tuesday without a major breakthrough.

But it appeared that representatives from armed Syrian rebel groups had not been asked to attend.

“We have invited on Friday all the opposition representatives from the political opposition that wish to come to Moscow and we will brief them about what happened in Astana,” Lavrov told lawmakers on Wednesday.

A spokeswoman for the Russian foreign ministry could not name which opposition groups from Syria’s vast array — some of whom are dismissed by rebels fighting on the ground as not genuine — would be represented.

A rebel negotiator from the armed opposition delegation that attended the Astana talks said they had not been invited to Moscow but did not rule out heading there if asked.

“We did not receive an invitation,” Fares Buyush told AFP from Istanbul.

“The problem isn’t the invitation, it’s the topic of discussion. If it’s serious and we’ll be discussing a national issue, we’ll go to the end of the world,” Buyush said.

Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed in Astana to establish a joint “mechanism” to shore up a shaky three-week truce in Syria, but offered few concrete details on how it would work.

Representatives from Damascus and the armed rebels in the Kazakh capital were expected to hold their first face-to-face talks since the conflict erupted in 2011, but the rebels refused and mediators had to shuttle between the two sides.

Putin praised the meetings, saying they offered a “good basis for continuing” the process in Geneva, referring to United Nations-led talks due to take place February 8.

“Thanks to our joint efforts, the process is developing on the basis of a very important decision that we managed to achieve — the ceasing of military action, a ceasefire between the government forces and the armed opposition,” Putin said at the meeting with Abdullah.

Russia has sidelined the West with its diplomatic push to find a political settlement to the war in Syria, after its military intervention to support President Bashar Assad turned the tables on the battlefield.

Rebel forces are reeling after regime troops, backed by Russian and Iranian firepower, dealt them the biggest blow in over five years of fighting, capturing their eastern Aleppo stronghold last month.

The war in Syria has cost at least 310,000 lives and forced millions to flee the country since Assad’s brutal crackdown on protesters turned into an armed conflict in 2011.