Syria talks brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran and aimed at bolstering a shaky ceasefire in place since last month opened on Monday in Kazakhstan, marking the first face-to-face meeting between the Damascus government representatives and rebel factions trying to overthrow it.
The gathering in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, is also the start of a new effort to end Syria’s six-year civil war.
The UN envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is participating in the talks, which if successful, are expected to be followed by more political talks in February in Geneva.
The new U.S. administration is not directly involved, because of the “immediate demands of the transition,” the State Department said Saturday, but Washington is represented by the U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan, George Krol, who attended Monday’s opening session held at the luxury Rixos President Hotel in Astana.
Representatives of Syria’s rebel factions — headed by Mohammad Alloush of the powerful Army of Islam rebel group — sat on one side of a large round table while the government delegation headed by Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, sat on the other.
Russia, Turkish and Russian delegates also sat at the round table, along with de Mistura and the U.S. ambassador.
After a short opening ceremony during which Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov spoke, the meeting went into closed session.
The talks are the latest attempt to forge a settlement to end a war that has by most estimates killed more than 400,000 people since March 2011 and displaced more than half the country’s population.
At the top of the agenda is an effort to consolidate last month’s ceasefire brokered by Turkey and Russia. The truce, which excludes extremist groups such as the Islamic State group and the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, has reduced overall violence but fighting and violations continue on multiple fronts.
The Astana gathering is the first time Syrian government representatives are sitting down with an opposition delegation made up mainly of rebel factions. Previous face-to-face talks in Geneva included an opposition delegation made up mostly of political figures. During the last round of talks in Geneva in early 2016, de Mistura was shuffling between the delegations sitting in separate rooms.