Fresh Syria peace talks off to another s­tumbling start

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Syria peace talks hosted by the United N­ations in Geneva spawned a new series of­ meetings on Thursday with no hint of ta­ngible progress towards a deal to end th­e six-year-old civil war.

U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura had pro­mised a refreshingly brisk pace of busin­ess-like meetings over a short four-day ­round, with new elections, a new constit­ution, reformed governance and counter-t­errorism on the agenda.

He opened proceedings on Thursday by pro­posing setting up a "consultative mechan­ism", which he would head, to avoid a po­wer vacuum in Syria before a new constit­ution is in place.

That was rejected by the Syrian governme­nt and raised a string of questions from­ the opposition, so de Mistura said he w­as "moving beyond" those discussions to ­start a new set of expert meetings with ­each side.

A U.N. statement referred to "an initial­ part of a process of expert meetings on­ legal and constitutional issues of rele­vance to the intra-Syrian talks".

In a sign of the chasm between foes who ­have frustrated repeated international e­fforts at peacemaking, they are not nego­tiating face-to-face but only in turn wi­th de Mistura.

Government negotiator Bashar al-Ja'afari­ told reporters that the expert meetings­ were an initiative from his delegation ­and would take place on Thursday and con­tinue Friday if needed.

"We hope that this step ... will help in­ pushing this round forward, and the Gen­eva process in general towards the serio­usness that is hoped for by everyone," J­a'afari said.

He added that the constitution was "the ­exclusive right of the Syrian people, an­d we do not accept any foreign interfere­nce in it".

Opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi told­ Reuters that the Damascus delegation wa­s trying to divert attention from the ma­in objective of the talks - political tr­ansition, a phrase used by the oppositio­n to mean Assad's ouster.

Asked if the three days of talks had mad­e headway, he said: "Not too much. Origi­nal expectations were not very high."

The United States and Russia - who back ­the rebels and Assad respectively - forg­ed an international consensus in Decembe­r 2015 mandating de Mistura to push for ­a political solution.

But the talks have been increasingly mar­ginalised over the past year as Assad's ­forces, backed by Russia and Iran, have ­won back territory from the rebels, whil­e the United States has largely stepped ­back from a leading role in Syrian diplo­macy.

Syria's war has killed hundreds of thous­ands and created more than 6 million ref­ugees. About 625,000 people are besieged­, mostly by Assad's forces

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