Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Supressor of the Damascenes...
began talks in Moscow Wednesday but there was little hope that they would make a breakthrough in ending the country's brutal war.
The talks between opposition groups tolerated by Damascus and a Syrian delegation led by ambassador to the United Nations
...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships...
Bashar Jaafari came as Kurdish forces battled the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group around Kobane, after expelling them from the strategic town on the Turkish border.
The rise of Islamic State -- which was threatening Wednesday to execute a Japanese hostage and a captured Jordanian airforce pilot -- has changed the West's approach to Syria and spurred hope that the warring sides might find common ground in the face of a mutual foe.
But expectations are low for the Moscow-sponsored talks -- aimed at restarting long-stalled peace negotiations to wind down the nearly four-year civil war -- as the main opposition group, the exiled National Coalition, has refused to attend.
The leading internationally-recognized opponents of Assad have stayed away, arguing that Russia -- Assad's most powerful remaining ally -- cannot be an honest broker.
The Syrian government delegation joined the closed-door Moscow talks after Assad's opponents held a series of meetings on Monday and Tuesday to thrash out a common platform.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- who has said that the Moscow encounter should lay the groundwork for future U.N.-mediated talks -- was set to meet the Syrian delegations later in the day.
Two previous rounds of talks in Geneva ended without success.
An opposition source at the meeting told AFP that the 32 opposition representatives attending were putting forward a "ten-point list" aimed at defusing a civil war that has claimed more than 200,000 lives since 2011.
Key priorities include calls to end bombing campaigns, freeing political prisoners, and establishing "mechanisms for the delivery of humanitarian aid".
The source said that the opposition figures would not immediately insist on establishing a transitional government to ease Assad from power.
"These first discussions are only the start of a long process," the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
over fears of derailing the sensitive encounter.
Assad himself has played down expectations for the meeting, calling into doubt the legitimacy of some of the opposition involved.
The United States has given its backing to the talks in Moscow amid signs that Washington may be recalibrating its Syria policy to focus on the Islamic State jihadist group, which has taken control of swaths of Iraq and Syria, rather than Assad's exit.