BICOM

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has withdrawn an invitation for Iran to attend the Geneva II peace conference for Syria, scheduled to take place at Montreux this week.

The withdrawal comes barely 24 hours after the invitation was first issued by Ban Ki-moon, in a move which appeared to take the US, Britain and the Syrian opposition by surprise. The Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) threatened on Monday to withdraw from the talks following the invitation for Iran to participate.

A UN spokesperson said the invitation was issued after the Secretary General received assurances from senior Iranian officials that Iran understood and supported the goals of the conference based on the Geneva Communiqué, issued at the first Syria peace conference in June 2012. The invitation was then withdrawn because the Secretary General was, “deeply disappointed by Iranian public statements today that are not at all consistent with that stated commitment.” The Geneva Communiqué agreed that an inclusive transitional government should take over from the current regime, leading to a democratic Syria.

US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki welcomed the decision, saying the US hoped “all parties can now return to focus on the task at hand, which is bringing an end to the suffering of the Syrian people and beginning a process toward a political transition.”

Iran is one of President Assad’s closest allies and has provided him and Hezbollah, which has fought alongside Assad’s troops, with material and military support against opposition groups. Ali-Akbar Velayati, an advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, told Iran’s IRNA news agency yesterday, “The very negative point of the Geneva I statement is that it requires the Syrian legitimate government and the country’s foreign-sponsored terrorists who have committed various crimes against Syrian people to sit on the same table.”