Michel Kilo, a Syrian writer and veteran of the opposition scene, said on Monday President Bashar al-Assad has failed to take note of opposition demands for more than a decade.
Speaking ahead of talks with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Kilo said Syrian opposition supporters have been trying to launch a comprehensive political dialogue with the Assad government since the early 2000s.
“Unfortunately, the [Assad] regime has not reacted to our demands,” Kilo said.
He also said Syria has become an “arena of international conflict,” adding: “As representatives of democratic forces, we believe the stabilization of the situation [in Syria] is in Russia’s interest.”
Kilo was a central figurehead of the Damascus Declaration reform movement, named after a document issued by Syrian opposition figures in 2005, in which they called for peaceful reforms based on national dialogue.
Kilo, a Christian, left Syria for France soon after his first arrest in the early 1980s. He returned to Syria in 1991, and was arrested again in 2006 and jailed for three years after signing the Beirut-Damascus Declaration, urging Syria to recognize Lebanon's independence. He was released in 2009.
Kilo led a delegation of Syrian opposition representatives from the Democratic Forum group at talks with Lavrov on Monday. The Russian minister said the talks were intended to push forward the implementation of a transition plan for Syria adopted during a Syria Action Group meeting in Geneva on July 30.
In a declaration issued after the talks in Geneva, the five permanent UN Security Council members (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States), as well as Turkey, Iraq, Qatar and Kuwait, called for an immediate end to violence in Syria and the creation of a transitional government to involve both government and opposition representatives.
The initiative leaves the formation of a transitional cabinet up to “mutual consent” between the Assad government and opposition groups. Representatives of major Syrian opposition forces have refused to negotiate the transition with Assad.
Lavrov said on Monday Russia was “one of a few countries, if not the only one, which has been actively working with both the [Syrian] government and various opposition groups,” trying to push both sides to stick to a peace plan proposed by UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
The plan was put into in-principle effect in mid-April, but was never implemented on the ground, and clashes between government forces and opposition fighters have continued to rage across Syria, bringing the death toll from the 17-month-old conflict to between 13,000 and 17,000, according to Syrian rights activists quoted by the United Nations.
Russia has twice vetoed UN Security Council resolutions condemning the Syrian government, citing a pro-rebel bias, but has given its full backing to the Annan plan.
In an interview with France’s Le Monde newspaper published this weekend, Annan admitted a failure to end violence in Syria and launch national dialogue.
“We have made significant efforts to resolve this situation by peaceful political methods. Obviously, we have not succeeded. And there is no guarantee that we will succeed,” he said.
Annan is visiting Syria on Monday to try one more time to persuade the sides to put guns down and begin talks.
