Delegates Monday arrived for the first Syria peace congress in Russia, but expectations for the dialogue were tempered after the war-torn country’s main opposition group said it would boycott the event.
Regime-backer Moscow has invited 1,600 people to the talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi as part of a broader push to consolidate its influence in the region and start hammering out a path to a political solution to end the bloody conflict.
Only a fraction of the invitees are set to participate in the event, however, according to a list of participants seen by AFP which has about 350 people on it.
The aim of the Tuesday congress is to bring Syria closer to creating a post-war constitution, after two days of separate U.N.-backed talks in Vienna last week closed without any sign the warring sides had met face-to-face to discuss the groundwork for the document.