Iran, Turkey, Russia Discuss Formation of Syria Constitutional Committee

In the Tuesday meeting, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, Alexander Lavrentiev and Sedat Onal, the top negotiators of Iran, Russia and Turkey in the Syria peace process, and UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura discussed the constitutional committee.

The participants discussed progress in the political process to settle the Syrian conflict, particularly the formation of the constitutional committee and stressed the following points:

1. The political process must be intra-Syrian and the integrated national sovereignty of Syria must be protected.
2. The composition of the committee must be acceptable to various sides and should be based on the facts on the ground in Syria.
3. All issues and details regarding the constitutional committee will be agreed upon as a single package.
4. Considering the sensitivity of issues and the consequences of the multi-year crisis in the country, making arrangements for formation of such a constitutional committee is time-consuming. But all sides stressed on the need for paying attention to both the speed and quality of the process.

In the meeting, the representatives of the three guarantors of the peace process in Syria agreed to create a working group comprising their experts to prepare the ground for consultations with the UN to facilitate the creation of the constitutional committee. They also agreed to start the third round of consultations late October.