Al-Aridi: Saudi Arabia has suspended the work of employees performing service tasks in the office of the Negotiating Commission in Riyadh

The Saudi Foreign Ministry informed the Syrian Negotiating Commission, to suspend the work of the staff at the Commission’s office in Riyadh, until the end of this January.

This came in a memorandum sent by the Saudi Foreign Ministry to the Negotiating Commission, in which it confirmed that the suspension of employees’ work will continue until the work of the Authority resumes.

The Saudi decision was followed by disagreements that appeared recently between the components of the commission, specifically after the message sent by the “Moscow Platform”, the “Coordination Committee”, and part of the “Cairo Platform”, to the UN Special Envoy to Syria Geir Pedersen, and to the Russian and Saudi Foreign Ministers, which they demanded.

By rejecting the decision of the head of the commission, Anas Al-Abdah, to replace members of the committee.
For his part, Dr. Yahya Al-Aridi, a spokesman for the negotiation commission, explained that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia did not suspend the work of the authority, but rather suspended the work of some local employees who do service things in the authority’s office in Riyadh.

Al-Aridi told “Arabi 21”: “It is not Riyadh’s prerogative to stop the negotiation commission, and it does not think so.” Rather, “Riyadh’s decision came due to differences between the components of the commission and directing components from the latter, a letter to the Foreign Ministry claiming that there were differences between the components.”
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Al-Aridi added, “The replacement of the Cairo platform for its representative in the Negotiation Committee and the Constitutional Committee, Qassem Al-Khatib, caused unease in some of the body’s components.”

Al-Aridi asserted, “He does not believe that the Saudi minister seeks to obstruct the work of the Syrian opposition, but Russia has sought from the beginning to undermine the credibility of the Syrian opposition, and the Russian strategy, and is keen to portray the Syrian opposition as separate opposition, serving the agendas of the Assad regime.

The decision of the Presidency of the Authority to accept the proposal to replace the member of the Cairo platform, Qassem Al-Khatib, had exposed the differences to the public, amid accusations by the Moscow Platform Authority and the Coordination Committee of exploiting the differences within the Cairo platform, to hit the work of the Commission, and to show the opposition as a separate opposition, in exchange for a system claiming legitimacy
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The negotiating committee was established in 2015, at the Riyadh 1 conference of the Syrian opposition, and the body consists of representatives of the Syrian National Coalition, the military factions, the National Coordination Authority (opposition to the Syrian interior), and the platforms of “Moscow and Cairo”, in addition to independents, and the coalition forms its solid core, and its tasks are limited to negotiation
With the Assad regime, under the umbrella of the United Nations.