Annan returns to Assad
July 9, 2012
Kofi Annan and Bashar al-Assad met on Monday in Damascus, with the 16-month conflict in Syria showing little sign of abating.
The UN-Arab League envoy described their discussions as "constructive," shortly after they finished in the Syrian capital.
The top mediator had been expected to discuss his six-point peace plan with the Syrian president, a day after a controversial Assad interview with German public broadcaster ARD. Assad said US political support for insurgents, who Syrian authorities call "terrorists," was undermining Annan's peace plan.
He said that countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar were supplying arms and other support to Syrian rebels.
"We know that [Annan] is coming up against countless obstacles but his plan should not be allowed to fail, it is a very good plan," Assad said. "The biggest obstacle is that many countries do not even want this plan to succeed, so they offer political support and continue to provide the terrorists in Syria with arms and money."
Annan touches on similar topic
Assad's accusations are not entirely dissimilar to a Kofi Annan interview with French newspaper Le Monde published over the weekend. Asked whether Russia, one of the few countries still close to the government in Damascus, was the key to success, Annan said "events are being forged by numerous actors" in the Syrian conflict.
"What really strikes me is that so many comments are made about Russia, while Iran is not mentioned as much, and above all, very little is said about other countries that send arms, money and have a presence on the ground," Annan said.
Without naming any explicitly, Annan said that all these countries "pretend to want a peaceful solution, but undertake individual and collective initiatives that even undermine the spirit of Security Council resolutions."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, told reporters at a news conference in Tokyo on Sunday that the Assad regime should see that "the sand is running out of the hourglass."
"There is no doubt that the opposition is getting more effective in their defense of themselves and in going on the offense against the Syrian military and the Syrian government's militias," Clinton said.
Hours ahead of the high-profile talks, residents in Damascus reported that machine-gun fire and explosions were audible in the capital again on Monday.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which offers daily estimates on casualties of the conflict, on Sunday said it believed more than 17,000 people have now been killed since the Syrian uprising began early last year.
msh/tj (AFP, dpa, Reuters)