BY , JANUARY 22, 2016The United States is mounting a last-ditch effort to salvage stalled political talks aimed at ending Syria’s nearly five-year civil war, deploying high-level delegations to Turkey and Saudi Arabia this weekend to head off possible boycotts by the Syrian opposition and one of its major backers, Ankara.
Turkey has privately warned the United Nations that it will walk out of the political process, which initially were set to start Monday, if Syrian Kurds whom Ankara accuses of being linked to a terrorist organization are included among the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey’s threat, revealed to Foreign Policy by U.N.-based diplomats, has not been previously reported.
In a meeting Saturday, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will urge Turkey’s leaders to continue participating in the U.N.-sponsored peace talks — even if the Syrian Kurdish negotiators are invited, according to U.N.-based officials.
At the same time, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will press Saudi officials and Syrian opposition leaders in Riyadh not to boycott the talks if the United Nations invites other rival opposition groups backed by Russia and Egypt, the officials said. Those groups, which attended peace talks in Moscow last August and in Cairo in June, are suspected by Syria’s armed rebels of being too close to Assad’s government to be trusted.
Turkey is refusing to engage with Kurds affiliated with the Democratic Union Party and its military affiliate, the People’s Protection Units, according to senior U.N.-based diplomats. Earlier this week, a Turkish delegation led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu issued its warning to withdraw from the International Syria Support Group, the multilateral group of nations overseeing the peace process, to the U.N.’s envoy, Staffan de Mistura, in Davos, Switzerland.
Who sits among the oppositio
