No sign of breakthrough on first day of Syria talks

Peace talks with Syrian rebels and the country's government got off to a rocky start on Monday.

The negotiations sponsored by Russia, Iran and Turkey in the Kazakh capital, Astana, are the latest attempt to end the war and seen as a test of Moscow’s influence in the Middle East.

The Syrian rebels' representatives vowed to keep fighting if peace negotiations with the government of President Bashar al-Assad fail, as the first day of talks in the Kazakh capital Astana ended with no apparent breakthrough.

The two sides began the talks trading insults after the rebels refused to negotiate face to face in the first session and the representative for Assad’s government described remarks by his opposite number as insolent.

A rebel spokesman said the first negotiation session was not held face to face because of the regime’s continued bombardment and attacks on an area near Damascus.

Bashar al-Jaafari, the leader of the Assad delegation and the Syrian ambassador to the UN, claimed the leader of the Syrian rebel delegation, Mohammed Alloush, was not serious and had acted in a way “removed from diplomacy” after he called for the Syrian President to go.

Alloush said the rebels were prepared to keep fighting if no deal was possible, and while a political solution to the civil war was the rebels’ preferred choice, it was not the only one. “We came here to reinforce the ceasefire as the first phase of this process,” he said. “We will not proceed to the next phases until this actually happens on the ground.” He described the Syrian government as a “terrorist entity”.

Alloush said in his opening remarks that the presence of Iranian-sponsored militias alongside regular Syrian government troops made peace more difficult to achieve, and called for them to leave the country. He also called for the release of prisoners from government jails, saying 13,000 women were being held arbitrarily.

Alloush insisted the political process would begin with the departure of Assad, Iran, and their militias – a set of demands that put the opposition at loggerheads with the regime.