Geneva talks to focus on Syria and Libya situation

The Geneva Peace talks on Syria and the worsening situation in Libya were the two topics that dominated headlines in the region’s papers.
The talks in Geneva ended with the modest hope that the two sides to the conflict realise that dialogue is the only viable option left to settle the six-year old conflict, which has left nearly half-a-million people dead, said the Jordan Times. “For the time being, it is obvious that Syria’s fate is in the hands of the two sides at the negotiation table. When the dust finally settles in the country, its future will be decided by the Syrian people, who must be given the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination freely.
Regional and international powers, all with vested interests, should abstain from playing out their fantasies vis-a-vis this old country and accept that only the Syrian people can decide its future. For Nazi Germany to control occupied France during the Second World War, it used some Frenchmen and formed a government of dummies, also called the Vichy government, in an attempt to legalise its presence. This is what the regime in Damascus is doing, London-based pan-Arab paper Asharq Al Awsat said.
“When the Syrian regime realised that the opposition had more legitimacy than it did, it resorted to a trick of inventing groups that claim to belong to the opposition. Then, the regime allowed these groups to work in Damascus and sent them to capitals like Tehran and Moscow to negotiate on behalf of the opposition. There is no point for the opposition, the High Negotiations Committee, to proceed after they had deprived it from everything, even the right to represent itself as an opposition. Everything that represents the regime is fake. The army isn’t its army and neither is the opposition, which it insists on negotiating with.”