Jarba to attend Geneva 2 with preconditions, A Coalition source says

A source from the political board of the National Coalition, denied what 'New York Times' reported about the opposition participation in the peace conference in Geneva ''with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria without preconditions.''

Zaman Alwasl source said Ahmad Jarba, Coalition president, didn't say he would attend Geneva2 with Assad's representatives without preconditions,'' as New York Times quoted, adding, Jarba's words had been deducted from its context.

Mr. Jarba, said in his interview in New York on Saturday that he wanted assurances that there would be a deadline for making progress.

“We believe there should be a precise time frame,” Mr. Jarba said to NY times. “The regime is used to manipulating the process and wasting time.”

Mr. Jarba, who met last week with Secretary of State John Kerry, said that he would not propose a specific deadline until the talks are closer at hand. But Burhan Ghalioun, a Syrian opposition member who participated in the meeting with Mr. Kerry, said that the opposition believes “Geneva must accomplish something in the first six months.”

Jarba told Mr. Kerry clearly that No Bashar al-Assad in the new transitional government or any officials from the Syrian regime, who involved in the Syrian bloodshed,'' the source said to Zaman Alwasl.

 “We will lose all credibility if the regime draws us into three or four years of talks, which have no substance,” Mr. Ghalioun said.

Mr. Jarba called the military situation in Homs “extremely difficult,” but “not impossible.”

A leader of the Shammar tribe, which has branches in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Mr. Jarba, 

Mr. Ghalioun said the opposition had told Mr. Kerry in their meeting that such steps also needed to include an end to artillery attacks, airstrikes and missile launches by the government forces.

That, he said, prompted Mr. Kerry to ask what the resistance might do in return, an important question as the opposition coalition does not control all the rebel groups, especially extremist factions like the Al Nusra Front.

Mr. Ghalioun quipped that the opposition would renounce the use of chemical weapons, which American officials say the rebels neither possess nor can access.

Mr. Jarba said that Mr. Kerry had mentioned that the opposition could put Mr. Assad on the defensive politically by attending the talks. But Mr. Jarba said he had little confidence that the Geneva talks would yield a breakthrough.

“I believe Geneva might happen," he said. “But will it produce a political solution? This is the question. I am not overwhelmingly optimistic because I know how this regime thinks.”