FINANCIAL TIMES: The UN on Monday withdrew an invitation for Iran to attend this week’s Syria peace talks just 24 hours after it was issued. The decision followed a day of intense diplomatic wrangling which nearly scuppered the negotiations before they had started.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, was forced to withdraw the invitation to Iran after the Syrian opposition threatened to boycott the talks if Iranian officials attended without first publicly committing to a transitional government for Syria.
Although talks involving the Syrian government and opposition members will start on Wednesday in Switzerland after months of painstaking planning, the slim prospects for a diplomatic breakthrough were underlined by the release of a report on Monday which claimed to detail mass killing and torture of opponents by the Syrian regime… (more)
