Pedersen: Agreement to start drafting constitutional reform in Syria

The United Nations envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, announced in a press conference, on Sunday, that the delegation of the Assad regime and the Syrian opposition agreed to start drafting a constitutional reform next week.

On the sidelines of a meeting, the first of its kind, with the two co-chairs of the committee on the opposition Hadi al-Bahra and the Assad regime Ahmed al-Kuzbari, Pedersen revealed that they agreed to start drafting a constitutional reform, according to Anadolu Agency.

He added, “We will not only prepare for constitutional reform, but we will prepare and start drafting for constitutional reform. So, the new thing this week is that we will actually be starting a drafting process for constitutional reform in Syria,”

He added, “But then also another very important meeting took place, and that was for the first time, the two co-chairs, the one nominated by the Assad regime and the other nominated by the opposition, were sitting down together with me for a substantial and frank discussion on how we are to proceed with the constitutional reform and indeed in detail how we are planning for the week ahead of us.”
Pedersen touched on the situation on the ground, saying: “Since March 2020, a relative calm has prevailed in Idlib governorate, and every day there are killings and injuries to civilians. Therefore, I appealed for the need to correct this situation, and there is a serious humanitarian and economic situation, as 30 million Syrians need humanitarian assistance and 90% they live below the poverty line.

He added: “the Syrian Constitutional Committee is an important contribution to the political process, but the committee in itself will not be able to solve the Syrian crisis, so we need to come together, with serious work, on the Constitutional Committee, but also address the other aspects of the Syrian crisis.

Regarding his expectations for the new round, he said: “I don’t know we will see how things go this week, and the issue does not depend only on the meeting of the 45, but also on the proposals of the expanded group (of the committee) consisting of 150 members.”

He continued, “There are clear principles that will be discussed, and we agreed to put 4 titles and texts to agree on, so let’s work hard during this week, and when we meet on Friday, we will be able to summarize what we have achieved.”

The two co-chairs of the Constitutional Committee on behalf of the delegations of the opposition and the Assad regime held the first direct meeting, yesterday, Sunday, in the presence of the United Nations Special Envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, prior to the start of the sixth round of the Syrian Constitutional Committee’s meetings at the United Nations headquarters in the Swiss city of Geneva.