On the sidelines of the 71st session of the UN General Assembly, general coordinator for the High Negotiations Committee, Riyad Hijab, said on Monday during his meeting with the EU minister Federica Mogherini that “there is no place for Bashar (Assad) from the beginning of the transitional period”, calling for an end to the displacement and demographic change which Syria is witnessing and which aims to change its identity.

For her part, Mogherini expressed the European Union’s support for the vision which the High Negotiations Committee presented in London, and expressed her “worry about the collapse of the humanitarian situation in Syria.”

The Russian Sputnik agency said on September 16 that a meeting would be held between the general coordinator for the Syrian High Negotiations Committee, Riyad Hijab, and the Russian deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov, in New York this week.

The agency quoted a source which it said was in the Syrian opposition as saying “information from inside the committee reports that it is likely that there will be a meeting between Hijab and Bogdanov on the sidelines of the General Assembly meetings in New York.”

The High Committee presented on September 7 its final vision around the future of the political process in Syria, and divided the political process into three main stages: the first was the negotiating stage and approving the basic principles for the transitional process, followed by the transitional stage, and finally the last stage, which ends with general elections, according to the document which Enab Baladi obtained a copy of.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.