Syrian National Coalition president urges Britain and other nations to thwart efforts by Iran and Russia to delay Vienna peace talks for Assad’s benefit

Russia and Iran cannot be trusted to take part in international diplomatic efforts to end the crisis in Syria because of their direct military intervention on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, the leader of the country’s main western-backed opposition group has warned.

Khaled Khoja, president of the Syrian National Coalition, urged Britain and other countries not to take part in open-ended talks after last Friday’s meeting in Vienna, the largest gathering yet devoted to ending the four-and-half-year war, which has claimed over 250,000 lives and made 11 million people homeless.

“There needs to be a deadline for the Vienna talks to reach a conclusion otherwise the Russians will drag them out and use the time to kill more civilians,” Khoja told the Guardian on Wednesday before meeting the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, and other senior British officials.



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Neither the Syrian government nor the opposition had been invited to take part in the one-day conference in the Austrian capital, which for the first time included Iran, Assad’s staunchest backer – despite objections from its bitter rival Saudi Arabia. It called for efforts to reach a ceasefire but failed to even mention the key – and divisive – issue of Assad’s future.



In the month since Russian airstrikes began, ostensibly against the Islamic State, 1,800 civilians had been killed while the Syrian regime has been further emboldened, Khoja said, launching attacks such as one on rebel-held Douma near Damascus on the day of the Vienna talks, which killed more than 60 people.

“The Russians are helping Isis gain more ground,” Khoja said. “They are targeting the moderate opposition and its constituency.” But they had been shocked by the weakness of the Syrian army and were unable to rely on it as an effective fighting force on the ground as the US and its allies were able to do with Shia militias in Iraq.

Progress towards a political solution could only be made if civilians were protected, he insisted. “The British and French need to guarantee the Syrian people that the killing will stop before the start of any political process as a confidence building measure.”



Khoja was continuing on to talks in Paris with the French government, hoping to drum up support for a “no-bomb zone” to keep Assad’s air force at bay. But the situation has been hugely complicated by the deployment of Russian combat aircraft on the regime’s side. And that, in turn, has led to a rethink in the UK government’s position on extending airstrikes against Isis from Iraq into Syria.



Khoja indicated that the anti-Assad opposition now had low expectations of the US after it blocked the delivery of anti-aircraft missiles from Saudi Arabia, though Free Syrian Army (FSA) units had been able to use Saudi-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles to destroy Syrian tanks in fighting around Aleppo.

Talks between Saudi Arabia and Turkey were expected to produce agreement on increased arms deliveries to the armed opposition, which he said now consisted of 70,000 fighters excluding jihadi groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra.

Khoja said the Vienna talks would be useful in showing whether Moscow and Tehran were indeed prepared to countenance Assad’s departure as part of a “Syrian-led political transition” in Damascus. The US and UK have signalled that the president could stay on for a few months if necessary but insist he must go eventually.

Russia and Iran have both hinted that they are not committed to Assad staying in power for ever, but nor have they done anything that suggests they are exploring alternative candidates.

“There is a difference between the Iranians and the Russians,” Khoja said. “The Russians need to enhance their influence whether Bashar al-Assad is in power or not. The Iranians are sticking with Bashar; they know no-one else will give them the same benefits.”

Russia had asked Khoja and other opposition leaders to attend talks in Moscow, but the SNC was refusing because of Moscow’s military backing for Assad and in line with a warning from the US that such talks were “premature”.



Khoja, a member of Syria’s Turkmen minority who is politically close to Turkey, warned that his country’s crisis would continue to generate massive refugee flows and spread terrorism unless it was resolved.

In 2011, he reflected, when Nato intervened in support of Libyan rebels fighting Mummar Gaddafi, Barack Obama was described as “leading from behind” while France and Britain took the initiative. “In Libya the US was leading from behind,” Khoja quipped. “But in Syria no one is leading at all. There is no political will.”