US moves not in interests of Syria talks: Webre

Press TV has conducted an interview with Alfred Lambremont Webre, peace activist and international lawyer, about US Secretary of State John Kerry calling on Syria’s divided foreign-backed opposition to join the upcoming peace conference in Geneva.

What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you assess Kerry essentially begging this opposition coalition to attend these peace talks?

Webre: Well I think that structurally the United States has made several serious strategic errors. The first error is that they have excluded a regional power from the conference and that is Iran. And even today Russia said that Iran will eventually have to join the conference and to have Iran excluded from the conference on a technical detail because Iran had some objections to a preliminary document was a very strategic error.

The second point is this that both the United States and Russia appear to be pushing the opposition, both the national coalition and the NCB into this conference when they do not have had time for a united front. And [Khaled] Dahowd of the NCB says as follows. He says US ambassador Robert Ford knows that this conference is going to fail but that is what he wants because it will probably degrade Syria further and allow Washington to get more power over the outcome when the real deal comes and Russia is also happy with this set up because they think that in the meantime Assad will be gaining more power and territory.

So that these are moves that the US may have made in its self-interest but it was not in the interest of the conference process apparently and also we have to think that if there is any calculation in the United States or some unseen power attempting to move toward World War III, one of their best options is to push the conference parties prematurely so as to appear to make it fail.

So my advice to Secretary Kerry and…to all parties is hey look, just back off and let the internal parties to decide among themselves and bring Iran to the table because Iran is the dominant regional power and Iran is what is going to make this conference work in my opinion.