Damascus threw cold water on any notion that upcoming peace talks between Bashar Assad’s government and rebel forces in Syria will end with the longtime leader stepping down from power.
“The official Syrian delegation is not going to … surrender power” as part of any negotiated peace deal, a Syrian foreign ministry official told the country’s state-run news outlet, SANA, on Wednesday.
{mosads}”If they insist on these delusions, there is no need for them to attend” the peace talks, according to the official.
“Our people will not allow anyone to steal their right to choose their future and their leadership,” the official added.
The talks, led by U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, are tentatively scheduled for January in Geneva.
Members of the Syrian National Council, the loose federation of secular rebel forces in Syria backed by the White House, will attend the talks on behalf of the opposition.
But members of the Syrian Military Council, led by Free Syrian Army commander Gen. Salim Idris, will not participate in the negotiations.
The Free Syrian Army is the largest and best-organized rebel force battling to oust Assad for the past two and a half years.
But the group’s absence from the talks, combined with the government’s unwillingness to consider a transition of power to rebel-led groups, has further inflamed doubts in Washington the Geneva talks will bring Syria’s bloody civil war to an end.
“I think we have to pursue it, we have to continue that dialogue … [but] Assad isn’t interested in cutting a deal,” House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said earlier this month.
“It’s a chaotic situation and it will be for awhile … we need to be mindful of our limited ability to force [an] outcome,” Smith said in a speech in Washington.
The proposed peace talks are a piece of a larger Syrian disarmament of its chemical weapons stockpile, brokered by the U.S. and Russia earlier this year.
In October, international inspection teams have completed dismantlement on one of the two final chemical weapons facilities inside Syria.
Inspectors have inspected 22 of the 23 sites declared in Syria and 39 of the 41 facilitates located at those sites.
The teams did not visit the final remaining site due to safety and security concerns.