MONTREUX. Jan 23 (Interfax) - Russia, the UN and the United States call on Syria's government and opposition delegations to start their talks by discussing simple matters, primarily the need to promote confidence building measures, agreeing their shared vision of the country's future and reaffirming that Syria is a secular country.
"Yesterday we discussed this issue with [U.S. Secretary of State] John Kerry, [UN Secretary-General] Ban Ki-moon and [UN-Arab League peace envoy for Syria] Lakhdar Brahimi. They should certainly move from simple questions to more difficult ones. Issues that are relatively less complicated are confidence building measures: prisoner exchanges, humanitarian access. This should help create some kind of relations between the two delegations," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters after an international conference on Syria in Montreux, Switzerland.
"As far as the short-term tasks are concerned, I am pleased that the understanding of the concept presented by us is growing. [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin has said more than once that the agenda for such an inter-Syrian process should include a question concerning the Syrians' own vision of their country and an extent to which such a vision would match the expectations of the international community," he said.