The 11th round of Astana talks on Syria, held Nov. 28-29, turned out to be the shortest in the process thus far. The guarantors published a joint statement in the morning of the second day, contrary to the established tradition of doing so in the evening. The brevity of the talks clearly demonstrated that the sides had failed to achieve any significant results. In all fairness, however, few had expected a breakthrough in a round that stressed new priorities such as prisoner exchanges. 

Shortly before the meeting, at a coordination council session of the Russian-French Trianon Dialogue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed his hope that the participants “take measures needed to finish the formation of the Constitutional Committee,” which is supposed to draft a new constitution for Syria under UN auspices. Meanwhile, TASS, the Russian state news agency, reported that complex questions had been “avoided within the summit’s agenda,” and no decisions “on the de-escalation zone in Idlib and on the Constitutional Committee” were made.

The sides did not even agree on the committee’s membership because of issues surrounding the third list of civil society representatives that the United Nations must approve, although 142 out of 150 suggested representatives have been agreed upon. Delegates from the Syrian opposition linked the controversy to “Russia’s attempts to impose certain names” that Staffan de Mistura, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for Syria, had already rejected.

De Mistura, who has announced that he will be stepping down in December, expressed his regret at the lack of substantial progress over the past 10 months. He called the meeting a “failed possibility,” promised to succeed in forming the Constitutional Committee by Dec. 31 and joked about the lack of women in the delegations.