A former Lebanese government minister, while relaying to Al-Monitor what he had heard in Damascus regarding the outlook for the upcoming Geneva II conference, invoked stories from the Paris peace talks on Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. According to him, the initial disputes that arose surrounding the Vietnam talks threaten to be an issue in Geneva as well.

There are a number of unresolved matters of protocol separating the regime and its opponents — the two parties who will be negotiating in Switzerland at the talks beginning Jan. 22 — starting with which flags will be present at the negotiating table. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad is demanding the official Syrian flag, while the opposition has adopted the “revolution flag.” The Syrian authorities consider the flag that appeared in Syria after the rebellion began in March 2011 to be a remnant of the era before Syria’s independence and a symbol of the French mandate over the country. Thus they view that flag as symbolizing a violation of Syria’s sovereignty, independence and, in particular, its unity.

During a visit to Beirut on Jan. 12, Syrian National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar, a figure from the “internal opposition,” told Al-Monitor that the frame of reference for the Geneva process is the wording in the Syrian Constitution. Of note, the design of the Syrian flag is provided in Article 6, thus it is not acceptable that any other flag be raised. 

The former Lebanese minister, who has close ties to Syrian authorities, said that in addition to the flag issue, he had heard about disagreements involving name tags for members of the two delegations. Opposition members are clinging to their new, revolutionary titles. For example, Ahmad al-Jarba calls himself the head of the National Coalition for the Revolutionary and Opposition Forces in Syria, with the rank of head of state. His coalition has been given Syria’s seat at the Arab League. Moreover, the oppositionists are embarrassing some conference sponsors by noting that it is the sponsors themselves who recognized Jarba as the head of the National Coalition and received him in various capitals as a head of state. How can they now expect him to behave differently at the negotiating table?