Selasa 21 Jan 2014 06:36 WIB

UN withdraws invitation to Iran to attend Syria talks

Foto: AP/Craig Ruttle

Jordanian Foreign Minister and President of the United Nations Security Council Nasser Judeh (right) has a conversation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as the Security Council meeting began at UN headquarters, Monday, Jan. 20, 2014.

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, GENEVA - A last-minute UN invitation for Iran to join this week's Syria peace talks threw the long-awaited Geneva conference into doubt Monday, forcing UN chief Ban Ki-moon to rescind his offer after the opposition threatened to boycott.

With the invitation withdrawn, the main Western-backed Syrian opposition group said it would attend the talks, which it said should aim to establish a transitional government with full executive powers "in which killers and criminals do not participate."

The surprise invitation, extended Sunday by the UN secretary-general, set off a flurry of diplomatic activity to salvage the talks. The US said the offer should be rescinded, and the opposition threatened to skip the event entirely.

The conference is set to begin Wednesday in the Swiss luxury resort city of Montreux, with high-ranking delegations from the United States, Russia and close to 40 other countries attending. Face-to-face negotiations between the Syrian government and its opponents — the first of the uprising — are to start Friday in Geneva.

The uproar over Iran's invitation threatened to scuttle the entire event.

The Syrian National Coalition, which had voted late Saturday to attend after months of rancorous debate, issued an ultimatum, saying that Iran must commit publicly within hours to withdraw its "troops and militias" from Syria and abide by a 2012 roadmap to establish a transitional government. Otherwise, the group said, the UN should withdraw its invitation for Tehran to take part.

The confusion surrounding the Iranian invitation underscored the tenuous nature of diplomatic effort to end the bloody conflict, which has morphed from peaceful protests to a vicious civil war with outside powers backing rebels who are fighting not only the government but rival insurgents as well.

Iran is Assad's strongest regional ally and has supplied his government with advisers, money and materiel since the Syrian uprising began in 2011. The Islamic Republic's allies, most notably the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, have also gone to Syria to help bolster Assad's forces.