MADRID
At least 150 members of the Syrian opposition will meet for the third time in Spain on January 9 and 10 in Cordoba city, ahead of an international conference later this month aimed at a political resolution to the three-year-long civil war.
The meeting’s agenda concerns ‘finding areas of reconciliation between different opposition groups.’
The Spanish Foreign Ministry said that a high number of Syrian opposition group members, including the Syrian National Coalition, would attend the meeting in an attempt to create a Syrian opposition platform in which ‘’all Syrians would feel integrated.’’
Director general Eduardo Lopez Busquets of Muslim studies institute Casa Arabe will host the meeting.
Busquets said the event ‘might seem complex but is important’ ahead of the Geneva II conference slated for later this month.
Members of the Syrian opposition will also meet Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo.
The Syrian opposition is bitterly divided, said Busquets, and in order to minimize these divisions as much as possible, factions must find common ground to stand on, and it must be Syria’s future peace and democracy.
Busquets said the United States, Russia and the European Union supports the Cordoba meeting.
The Syrian civil war has claimed more than 100,000 lives and displaced over two million Syrians to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
