List of Geneva II participant countries determined

GENEVA

The list of the participant countries of the Geneva II conference on Syria has determined on Friday.

"We just finished the last segment of our meetings today. That is, as you know, we met first in the morning and the beginning of the afternoon in the trilateral format with the Russians and the Americans, and then we met with the P5, and the last meeting, in the last meeting, the four neighbours where there are lots of refugees from Syria, have joined us – that is Turkey, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon," said UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi at the press conference on Friday in the UN Office at Geneva.

Brahimi said, "the participants in addition to the United Nations, naturally, to the P5, the Secretary General of the League of Arab States, the High Representative of the European Union, the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, in addition to these obvious participants, this is the list of, I think, 26 countries that are going to be there: Algeria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Norway, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. These are the participants who are going to be there."

"We are just one name short of agreement about the list of participants," said Brahimi, and added, "I am sure you don’t know what name that is, so I am going to tell you: on Iran we have not agreed yet. It is no secret that we in the United Nations welcome the participation of Iran, but our partners in the United States are still not convinced that Iran’s participation would be the right thing to do.  We have agreed that we will be talking a little bit more to see if we can come to an agreement on this question." 

"Now, what we have confirmed today with all the people we have talked to, and also with the Government and with the opposition, is that January 22 is the date when the conference will start. The government has, in fact, officially informed us that they already had formed the delegation, but they have not yet sent the names; they said that they would send them to us soon and they will make them public soon," Brahimi added.

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