Russia: UN envoy lauds Moscow’s role in settlement of Syrian conflict

W/S UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu shake hands, Moscow
W/S Shoigu and Pedersen ready to take their seats
M/S Shoigu and Pedersen take their seats
SOT, Sergei Shoigu, Russian Defence Minister (Russian): “We held a meeting a year ago with you here, in the Defence Ministry. We have mentioned that we have to work actively on creating the constitutional committee and launching it. A lot has been done, the committee is ready, it held its first meeting, you had a big part to do with it. I believe this committee has good perspectives in case we will work together to provide it. I would like to highlight we are satisfied both with the committee’s performance and with the situation in Syria. In fact, terrorist groups are completely destroyed. Of course there are still some issues to work on, such as international forces, who were not invited there, remaining in Syria.”
W/S Meeting
SOT, Geir Pedersen, UN Special Envoy for Syria: “I have appreciated very much the cooperation with the Russian government. I think the achievements we have made so far would not have been possible without Russia. Of course also Russia's cooperation with two other members of the Astana group, but in my opinion, there is no doubt that for us Russia is the key interlocutor.”
M/S Russian Defence Ministry officials
SOT, Geir Pedersen, UN Special Envoy for Syria: “I was very pleased to see that we could work very closely with the government in Damascus and also with the SNC, the opposition. I think that was an important, sort of, breakthrough in the the sense that for the first time both the government and the SNC agreed on the paper and agreed to use that as a basis to sit down and to negotiate.”
M/S Meeting
W/S Meeting
SCRIPT
The UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen stated that progress in the Syrian settlement "would not have been possible without Russia", speaking in Moscow at a meeting with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu.
“Of course also Russia's cooperation with two other members of the Astana group, but in my opinion there is no doubt that for us Russia is the key interlocutor,” Pedersen said.
On his part, Shoigu said that Moscow was pleased with the work of the Syrian constitutional committee.
“I would like to highlight we are satisfied both with the committee’s performance and with the situation in Syria. In fact, terrorist groups are completely destroyed. Of course there are still some issues to work on, such as international forces, who were not invited there, remaining in Syria,” he said.
The committee is tasked with drafting Syria a new constitution and met for the first time on October 30 in Geneva. It is made up of 150 Syrian delegates representing the government, the opposition and civil society.