Syria peace talks grind toward pivotal Assad question

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By Tom Miles and Suleiman Al-Khalidi GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian government negotiators at Geneva peace talks are coming under unaccustomed pressure to discuss something far outside their comfort zone: the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura describes Syria's political transition as "the mother of all issues" and, emboldened by the Russian and U.S. muscle that brought the participants to the negotiating table, he refuses to drop the subject. "But I hope next week, and I have been saying so to them, that we will get their opinion, their details on how they see the political transition taking place." Arguments over Assad's fate were a major cause of the failure of previous U.N. peace efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end a civil war that has now lasted five years, killed more than 250,000 people and caused a refugee crisis.




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