Syrians brand Geneva crisis talks a failure

Updated July 02, 2012 00:27:57

Both official Syrian media and an opposition group have branded a world powers deal on a transition plan for the country as a failure.

World powers meeting in Geneva on Saturday agreed to a transition plan that could include current regime members, but the West did not see any role for president Bashar al-Assad in a new unity government.

Russia and China insisted that Syrians themselves must decide how the transition should be carried out rather than allow others to dictate their fate.

Moscow and Beijing, which have twice blocked UN Security Council resolutions on Syria, both signed up to the final agreement that did not make any explicit call for Mr Assad to cede power.

Both official Syrian media and the opposition Local Coordination Committees (LCC) group demonstrated rare agreement on Sunday in slamming the outcome of the Geneva talks.

The meeting "failed," trumpeted Al-Baath, the newspaper of the ruling party.

"The agreement of the task force on Syria in Geneva on Saturday resembles an enlarged meeting of the UN Security Council where the positions of participants remained the same," it said.

The LCC, which organises protests on the ground in Syria, said the outcome showed once again the failure to adopt a common position.

The new agreement contains obscure turns of phrase that give the Assad regime's gangs another chance to play for time in suppressing the popular revolution.

Opposition group LCC

It called the transition accord "just one version, different in form only, of the demands of Russian leaders allied to the Assad regime and who cover it militarily and politically in the face of international pressure."

"The new agreement contains obscure turns of phrase that give the Assad regime's gangs another chance to play for time in suppressing the popular revolution and to silence it through violence and massacres."

Assad 'is finished'

But French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday that the text agreed by members in Geneva implied that Mr Assad would have to step down.

When asked why it appeared Russia and China had a different perspective on the future of Mr Assad, Mr Fabius said: "Even if they say the opposite, the fact that the text says specifically that there will be a transitional government with all powers means it won't be Bashar al-Assad," he said.

"[That is] because it will be people that are agreed to by mutual consent.

"The opposition will never agree to him, so it signals implicitly that Mr Assad must go and that he is finished," Mr Fabius told television station TF1.

UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan said after the Geneva talks that a new Syrian government should include members of Mr Assad's administration and the Syrian opposition and that it should arrange free elections.

Mr Fabius said a meeting on July 6 in Paris with more than 100 participants would aim to create a "united front" among all strands of the opposition to help put in place the Annan proposal. Neither China nor Russia have agreed to attend the "Friends of Syria" conference.

Dozens killed

The Geneva deal comes as more than 80 people are reported to have been killed in violence in Syria at the weekend.

On Saturday, at least 83 people were killed, mostly civilians, and hundreds more were trapped in Douma, north of Damascus, as regime forces stormed the town, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights said.

In the single most serious incident, mortar fire killed 30 civilians at a funeral in the town of Zamalka, 10 kilometres east of Damascus, the Britain-based watchdog said.

While the violence rages in Syria there is also mounting concern about the destabilising impact it has on the region, in particular Jordan and Lebanon.

The Turkish-Syrian border also remains a potential flashpoint.

Turkey has sent tanks, troops and missile batteries toward the frontier, after Syria shot down a Turkish jet just over a week ago.


Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, government-and-politics, world-politics, syrian-arab-republic

First posted July 01, 2012 22:54:01