The two-day meeting at the Rixos hotel kicked off with frosty exchanges between the principal negotiators, Damascus’ UN envoy Bashar Jaafari and the delegation of armed rebels headed by Mohammed Alloush, the leader of the Islamist alliance Jaysh al-Islam. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev opened the talks, stressing that the Syrian conflict could only be solved “via negotiations.” “The...