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Riyadh meeting on Syria, absurd: Pundit

Friday, 11 December 2015 5:00 AM [ Last Update: Friday, 11 December 2015 5:00 AM ]

A picture provided by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on December 10, 2015 shows Saudi King Salman (R) listening to a member of the so-called Syrian opposition during a meeting in Riyadh. (Photo by AFP)

Press TV has conducted an interview with Hafsa Kara-Mustapha, a journalist and Middle East expert, in London, and Daniel Pipes, the president of the Middle East Forum, in Philadelphia, to discuss a Saudi-hosted meeting of so-called opposition figures and militant groups fighting the Syrian government.

Kara-Mustapha says, “There is a coalition of an enormous terrorist convention that is actually sitting together and deciding the fate of Syria without Syrians, without Syrian officials, without actually taking into account what Syrians want and all this is happening in Saudi Arabia, the most reactionary and the most undemocratic nation in the Arab world.”

She says Saudi Arabia’s hosting of the meeting in the absence of Syrian delegations indicates the “absurdity” of the gathering in Riyadh, emphasizing that the meeting should not be given any importance.

The fact that the Kurds are not taking part in the Saudi-hosted meeting proves it is “pointless,” she says, adding that, “When you have heard the coalitions are saying they are willing to make no concessions with the Syrian government, I think it shows this isn’t a peace meeting, but rather an ultimatum meeting that is simply designed to maintain the war.”

Pipes, for his part, believes the Saudis’ move to get anti-Syrian militants together seems to be an act of “herding cats’ but cats cannot be herded. He added “neither can the opposition groups in Syria be herded.”

According to the analyst, the Kurds are the only party who played a positive role in the Syrian conflict, because they “have not been engaged in massacres” and are not propagating an extremist ideology.

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