The Syrian government has rejected Kurdish autonomy to be included in a new draft constitution for the country being written by Russia.

Article 40 in the draft constitution called for decentralized “people’s societies”.

“The Kurdish cultural self-ruling systems and its organizations use both the Arabic and Kurdish languages equally,” the draft reads.

The Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), however are refusing to budge that federalism can be the only solution.

The Syrian government has rejected local autonomy or recognition of the Kurdish language on an equal level to Arabic.

The difficulty would also mean that other minority languages would also need to be recognized including Greek, Aramaic, Turkish and many others that the PYD have not advocated for.

According to the Syrian state media, during the Syrian peace talks in Astana last week, the Syrian government envoy Bashar Jaafari, said that the issue of federalism would be decided “by all Syrians and not decided unilaterally by a single component,” adding that all ideas “even one as crazy as federalism, must be put to a democratic vote”

“It’s completely unacceptable for a group of people to decide to create a statelet and call it federalism,” Jaafari continued.