29/09/12

Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomes Nabil Elaraby as she hosts a gathering of Friends of Syria group in New York (AP/David Karp))

raq’s foreign minister has proposed a two-stage plan to bring both sides of the Syrian conflict together to discuss a political transition in the hope of ending the 18-month war that has killed more than 30,000 people.

Hoshyar Zebari said he made the proposal at a ministerial meeting of 20 countries mainly opposed to the government of President Bashar Assad. The closed meeting of key members of the Friends of Syria was chaired by US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby.

“The discussions were very good,” he said. “I think everyone…recognised the need for a political transition - no pre-conditions - not to adopt maximalist positions.”

The first stage would be to bring together the countries that endorsed a blueprint leading to a political transition that was adopted in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 30 to now focus on implementing its planks, Mr Zebari said.

The second stage would be to invite representatives of the government and the opposition, both inside and outside Syria, to a conference in a neutral country outside the Middle East.

He said international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi would have to carry the plan forward.

At the Geneva meeting, the five veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council who are deeply divided over Syria joined other key countries interested in Syria to approve a broad framework that would require both the opposition and the Assad regime to agree to a new interim government for the country, leading to elections.

The plan also would require Syrian security forces to have the confidence of both sides.

The Geneva meeting was called by Mr Brahimi’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, after Russia and China had vetoed two Western-backed resolutions aimed at pressuring Assad to stop fighting and start negotiations. Moscow and Beijing vetoed a third resolution that raised the threat of sanctions against Assad on July 20.

Mr Zebari said the tone of the Friends of Syria meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s annual ministerial session was positive and pragmatic. “Before it was very difficult to present such ideas,” he said. “Really now, everybody is becoming more and more concerned and more realistic.”

28/09/12
By John Irish and Amena Bakr

(Reuters) - Western and Arab states demanding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s exit are under pressure to produce a plan to make that happen, but their unwillingness to act outside a deadlocked U.N. Security Council leaves them looking fractured and powerless.

Foreign ministers and senior diplomats from the “Friends of Syria” - a group that includes the United States, France, Saudi Arabia and Turkey - are due to meet in New York on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Friday.

“I just expect ideas to be presented. There will be no concrete plans,” Arab League Secretary General Nabil El-Erabi told Reuters. “Governments are not ready to put plans into action and the Security Council is not agreeing on anything.”

The 18-month uprising against Assad’s rule has killed around 30,000 people, according to activists. The protests have further escalated into an armed insurgency fighting with sectarian overtones that could drag in regional powers.

The General Assembly this week highlighted the global stalemate, with most of the 193-states condemning events in Syria but showing no substance behind their rhetoric.

Russia, which has three times vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria, stuck to its position: Assad’s departure should not be a precondition for a political transition and under no circumstances will it support a U.N. resolution that could lead to military intervention.

Painting a bleak picture of mediation efforts, U.N.-Arab League representative Lakhdar Brahimi told the Security Council that the situation in Syria is worsening and Assad’s government is clinging to the hope of returning to the past. Five weeks into the job, he admitted he had no plan but “a few ideas.”

Opponents of the Syrian president look less united in their approach. Qatar, one of Assad’s strongest critics, called for an alternative plan and once again urged Arab states to create a regional force to stop the bloodshed.

But Saudi Arabian and Egyptian diplomats, representing the two countries most likely to compose such a force, told Reuters Qatar’s plans are unrealistic.

Egypt, under new Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, tried to bring together Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran - Assad’s main ally in the region - for talks on finding a solution, but failed to get them around the table for the second time.

President Barack Obama, preoccupied with his re-election bid on November 6, barely mentioned Syria in his address to delegates. Former colonial power France urged the U.N. to protect areas “liberated” in Syria, but officials acknowledged behind the scenes the calls were essentially symbolic.

FAILED MEDIATION

Most nations, including Russia and China, agree on the principles of a previously proposed six-point peace plan and framework of an accord struck in Geneva between the permanent members of the Security Council.

Both those plans are stillborn unless an agreement with Russia can be struck on how to ensure they are implemented.

“Unfortunately, all these mediations have failed,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Reuters. “We all support Lakhdar Brahimi, but we have learned that there must be a stronger mandate given to the special representative.”

He said the Friends of Syria was created to defend the rights of the Syrian people and not to undermine the United Nations. The group now seems as hamstrung as the Security Council.

Western and Arab diplomats describe Friday’s meeting as an opportunity to “exchange ideas.” The session will assess efforts to create an all-inclusive transitional government and increase humanitarian and non-lethal aid to the opposition.

France and Turkey have also called for no-fly zones patrolled by foreign aircraft to protect rebel-held areas. With the United States lukewarm, the proposal remains just an idea.

“We have obviously never at any point taken anything off the table,” a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ahead of Friday’s meeting. “We believe that there is still room for a negotiated transition that leads to an interim government and ultimately to a new Syria. This is not about drawing red lines.”

‘LEGITIMATE CHANNELS’

One senior Gulf Arab diplomat echoed the U.S. position, warning against any direct military intervention. He said Arab states see the United States as key to breaking the deadlock.

“Going through legitimate channels to resolve the issue is the best path to take; any action taken by individual countries will only lead to more violence,” he said.

“The U.S. is the only country that could force Russia to change its position,” the diplomat said, adding that he sees no real move on the crisis until after the U.S. election.‬‪

With the main political opposition bodies fragmented, the Friends of Syria’s main push could centre on developing contacts with the Free Syrian Army (FSA), particularly as its fighters oust Assad’s forces from significant portions of the country.

Western European powers have ruled out supplying weapons to lightly armed Syrian rebels, but France is increasing its links with insurgents. “The more the opposition advances the easier it will become,” the Arab League’s El-Arabi said.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been overseeing cross-border movements from a secret liaison centre in Turkey. Turkey denies any direct involvement in sending arms across the frontier. U.N. diplomats say Saudi Arabia and Qatar have transferred weapons to rebels.

“The Friends of Syria can’t do much,” said a Paris-based Arab diplomat. “It’s sit, wait and hope the rebels gain ground.”

(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn; Editing by Will Dunham)

27/09/12

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Tehran was working to set up a separate contact group on the conflict in Syria, in a move unlikely to be welcomed by many nations.

“We do believe that through a national dialogue and a national understanding and consensus, they can, the various Syrian sides, reach a more solid conclusion, a more tangible and long-lasting conclusion,” the Iranian leader told a press conference in New York.

“Therefore we strive to pave the way for national dialogue and national understanding between the two sides and we are working hard to stand up and shape a contact group from various countries.”

He refused to divulge which nations had been approached by Iran to join the group, saying he was hopeful the Iranian foreign ministry would make an announcement in the coming days.

Tehran is already included in another so-called “contact group,” involving Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and has called for sending observers to Syria in an effort to quell the violence there.

There is a separate Friends of Syria group headed by the United States and grouping some 60 nations, which will meet Friday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly to discuss the conflict in which an estimated 29,000 people have been killed.

Speaking through a translator to journalists, Ahmadinejad accused “outside forces” of meddling in Syria, without directly naming any countries.

The Syrian issue “has become incredibly complicated because of the meddling of outside forces,” he said.

He warned that outside interference might yield “short-term results, but for decades to come it will keep Syria in complete chaos and instability.”

“The social fabric of Syria does not have the capacity to allow some tribal groups to gain the reins of power through warfare. And if followed will bring with itself subsequent warfare.”

He did not address charges from the United States that Iran is arming the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which is engaged in a brutal suppression of an 18-month-old rebellion.

Instead, the Iranian leader insisted his Islamic republic was working for peace.

“I am hopeful that all of those who beat the drums of war can come to understand the sensitive conditions of Syria. The European countries and America as well,” he said.

“No-one should meddle or interfere in the internal affairs of Syria. Anything that the people of Syria decide upon must be respected by all.”

-AFP

20/09/12

The Syrian flag flutters above Damascus on September 20. Diplomats from over 60 nations and the Arab League met in The Hague on Thursday to toughen and improve coordination of sanctions against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

AFP - Diplomats from over 60 nations and the Arab League met in The Hague on Thursday to toughen and improve coordination of sanctions against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“We need vigorous implementation,” Netherlands Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal told the opening of the “Friends of Syria” sanctions working group.

“Sanctions will only have an impact if they are carried out effectively. That is how we can make a difference.”

The meeting comes after the European Union agreed earlier this month on the need to beef up sanctions against Assad’s inner circle as the world struggles to resolve the bloody 18-month conflict.

The European Union and the Arab League have slapped sanctions on the Syrian regime, with embargoes on oil and weapons as well as travel bans on members of Assad’s family and his top brass.

“The regime and its trading partners try to get around sanctions,” Rosenthal said. “So we need to work together with public and private partners, by sharing information and best practices.”

Experts from the financial sector were also meeting in The Hague to discuss ways of bolstering economic sanctions, including through asset freezes.

“It’s not a question of whether he will leave but when he will leave,” Rosenthal said of Assad.

He added that besides embargoes and financial sanctions it was important to prevent Damascus from monitoring the Internet and using it to detain opponents and journalists.

“To you and me ICT (information and communications technologies) are innocent tools we use every day,” the Dutch foreign minister said.

“But we need to ensure it can’t be used to commit violence or oppress the Syrian people,” he said.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Assad regime’s control of the Internet is “remarkably extensive” and allows the regime to keep tabs on mobile phones, emails, texting and other traffic.

A French firm is under investigation for allegedly providing computer surveillance equipment to Syria used to track and arrest regime opponents.

The Syria sanctions working group runs in parallel with a second working group on economic reconstruction in the war-ravaged country.

The “Friends of Syria” group has already held three meetings at ministerial level in Tunis, Istanbul and Paris. Another such meeting is planned in Morocco in October and another at a later date in Italy.

More than 27,000 people have been killed in violence across Syria since March last year, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The United Nations puts the figure at more than 20,000.

The international community has struggled to find common ground on ways to halt the bloodshed, with Russia and China vetoing three UN Security Council resolutions providing for sanctions against the Assad regime.

07/08/2012

A diplomatic resolution looks unlikely in Syria, but in the realm of Saudi politics, a personal invitation from the king is symbolically important

Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been invited by the Saudi king to attend a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images

The visit of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to Saudi Arabia comes at a crucial time for the conflict in Syria. Few observers can be optimistic about the chances for diplomacy, with the Annan plan abandoned and the quieter efforts at reaching a US-Russia deal stalled.

Most analysts predict that Syria’s uprising against dictatorship – which began as a peaceful cross-sectarian movement calling for basic freedoms – will increasingly mutate into a sectarian civil war. Much of the western policy debate is moving on to the risks of prolonged state failure in a post-Assad future.

Within the Arab world, the debate over Syria is increasingly becoming polarised along ideological and sectarian lines, as the country’s strategic importance to the region’s great powers seems to be obscuring the commonalities between the basic demands of the Syrian protesters and their counterparts in other Arab countries. Any efforts to draw back from the brink – and to stop the Syrian uprising against dictatorship being derailed by a sectarian regional proxy war – deserve attention.

Ahmadinejad’s visit, which an aide has said will go ahead, is a rare one. He last visited Saudi Arabia in 2007, at a time when the Gulf states were trying so hard to reach out to Iran that Qatar even invited him to join in the annual summit of the Gulf Co-operation Council (the regional organisation representing the six Gulf Arab monarchies, which was founded in 1981 partly in response to the perceived threat of the Iranian revolution).

Although there is a long history of rivalry and competition between the Gulf Arab countries and Iran, relations have not always been so conflicted. Back in 2008, Ahmadinejad visited Bahrain and signed an agreement for Iran to supply Bahrain with natural gas. The deal, which seems almost unthinkable today, never materialised.

By contrast, Ahmadinejad’s most recent foray to the other side of the Gulf was in April, when he toured Abu Musa, an island occupied by Iran but claimed by the UAE. This prompted fury in the Gulf monarchies, where rulers saw it as a sign of Iranian expansionist tendencies, and were frustrated by the lack of reaction from their western allies (who were preparing for talks with Iran over the nuclear issue and who are not deeply engaged on the islands issue).

It is in Syria that the Saudi-Iranian confrontation has become the most pronounced and dangerous, but the two are competing for influence in the wider region. They back rival camps in Iraq, Lebanon, and to some extent Yemen and the Palestinian territories (though Hamas has always had some support in the Gulf and is now distancing itself from both Iran and Syria). They are also at odds over the treatment of Shia protesters in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s own eastern province. Saudi officials routinely suggest that Iran is fomenting the protests in both cases.

For its part, Iran’s interests seem to be best served by giving only moral support to the protesters, so it can sit back and watch its rivals challenged from within, without the kind of direct involvement that could spark retaliation.

Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are effective exploiters of “soft power”, making use of their various media channels and religious networks to try to discredit the other.

One of the disadvantages of this approach is that it is never quite clear how centralised the control of foreign policy really is. Another problem is that the Middle Eastern media are becoming increasingly sectarian – a trend that is worrying many people in the ethnically and religiously diverse countries of the Gulf.

Now, with the collapse of Kofi Annan’s mission to Syria, the Gulf Arab monarchies are becoming more open about their support for the Syrian opposition, including the armed Free Syrian Army. Saudi Arabia has hosted a variety of Syrian opposition visitors, from members of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood to Assad’s estranged uncle, Rifaat al-Assad and Manaf Tlass, a senior Syrian military officer who defected just a few weeks ago.

The latter visitors illustrate that Saudi Arabia is not only supporting the Islamist opposition; it has its own concerns about the rising regional influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose focus on electoral politics represents a major challenge to the Saudi model of partnership between clerics and hereditary rulers.

The UAE is also pursuing a delicate balancing act, as it is home to a number of Syrian National Council activists – who recently announced the defection of the Syrian ambassador to the UAE – but is extremely wary of the role the Muslim Brotherhood could play in its own territory, and is investigating around 50 imprisoned Islamist political activists who are accused of conspiring with foreign organisations.

Even before the Annan mission collapsed, the Saudi and UAE foreign ministers were expressing extreme frustration with what they see as international inaction over Syria. Saudi Arabia has never seemed particularly convinced by western diplomatic efforts; Kofi Annan did not visit Riyadh during his Syria mediation efforts, and neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran was included in the last “Friends of Syria” meeting.

Most indications point to further conflict rather than a diplomatic resolution. But in the highly personalised realm of Saudi politics, a personal invitation from the king is symbolically important.

In Lebanon, in 2008 and 2009, the confrontation between the Saudi-backed 14 March alliance and the Iranian-backed 8 March alliance occasionally looked like it could lead to renewed civil conflict. But there, the rival factions stepped back from the brink, negotiating power-sharing agreements before and after the 2009 elections.

This would be far harder to achieve in Syria, with its daily bloodshed and its asymmetry of forces, but the cost of conflict is high enough for any remaining diplomatic options to be worth exploring.

International envoy Kofi Annan said he agreed with President Bashar al-Assad on Monday on a new “approach” to end Syria’s 16-month-old conflict that he would put to the rebels.

UN-Arab envoy Kofi Annan and Syrian President Bashar Assad  Photo: AFP

Australia is giving a further $5 million in humanitarian relief aid to Syria.

Speaking after the Friends of Syria meeting in Paris on Friday (AEST), Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Syria’s internal conflict had reached a “tipping point”.

More than 10,000 people have lost their lives and hundreds of thousands are in urgent need of aid.

“Australia has taken a lead in calling for a unified international response to end the bloodshed,” Senator Carr said in a statement on Sunday.

“But we must also act to address the humanitarian crisis, with medical supplies, food and shelter.”

The additional $5 million in aid will bring Australia’s total contribution to $16 million.

The funds will support non-government organisations providing medical aid in Syria’s conflict zones and will assist the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which helps the growing number of Syrians fleeing their country.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius listen during a meeting of the “Friends of the Syrian People” at the MFA Conference Center July 6, 2012 in Paris, France.

By Elise Labott

When the Friends of Syria group began meeting this year, first in Tunis and again in Istanbul, there was a sense of possibility. Perhaps the group would endorse military action against Syria. Maybe they would recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate opposition group.

Six months in, the allure has worn off. At their third meeting in Paris, there were no expectations any decisions would be made, except for who would host the next meeting.

Calls were made for tougher sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, even though most countries which had any business with Syria have already imposed tough measures to no avail.

The group did endorse a transition plan hatched last week in Geneva. The document endorses a Syrian-led transition as part of the peace plan designed by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan. The fact that the plan, which provides for an interim government, has no relation to the current reality on the ground or that it had no input from either the Syrian regime or the opposition - the two parties which would have to implement it - didn’t seem to be nearly as important as the fact that Russia and China went along with it.

In lieu of an agenda, there was plenty of blame in Paris to heap on Russia and China. Offering her harshest rebuke of Moscow and Beijing to date, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on each leader present at the meeting to demand that Syria “get off the sidelines.”

“I don’t believe Russia and China believe they are paying any price at all, nothing at all for standing up on behalf of the Assad regime,” Clinton said.

The longer the conflict drags on, the tougher Clinton’s rhetoric on Russia becomes.

By placing the blame squarely on Russia and China, Clinton and others are able to delude themselves that diplomatic efforts can end the conflict with the main goal of getting Assad out. But in their heart of hearts they know even the most detailed roadmap of a post-Assad Syria has no hope of changing the military balance on the ground enough so that the Syrian military, Assad’s inner circle, and Moscow see Assad as a sinking ship and abandon him.

Diplomats in New York are already at work on a new U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing the Annan plan and imposing sanctions on the regime if it fails to implement it. The resolution would be under Chapter 7, which has the implied threat of military action.

But this, too, is a mirage. Privately, U.S. and other western officials recognize they are spinning their wheels. They know there is no chance the Assad regime would implement the Annan plan without a credible military threat and they also know that the appetite for international military action is, well, nonexistent.

Since the conflict in Syria began, the international community has had many excuses for inaction: the lack of a credible opposition, Russian intransigence and the fear of further militarizing the conflict. The need to give Annan’s peace plan time to work was just the latest justification.

Riad Seif, a prominent businessman and former member of parliament who recently left Syria and is now a member of the opposition, gave voice to what many Syrians are feeling about the futility of the “Friends of Syria” exercise when he asked the group to make its friendship actually mean something.

“After so many conferences, we fail to see how we have so many friends and people are dying every day,” he told the group during a fiery address. “Help us put an end to this massacre.”

It’s not often that an international conference produces a pleasant surprise. But the 103 nations that attended a conference of Friends of the Syrian People in Paris yesterday did so.

The difference started with French President Francois Hollande’s inaugural address — where he described the crisis in Syria as “a threat to international security and peace.”

In diplomatic parlance, that’s a coded demand for the issue to be considered under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter — which allows for military intervention.

Hollande, in short, means to stop the Friends of the Syrian People from continuing to dance around the issue, as they did at previous gatherings in Tunis and Istanbul.

Hollande: French prez hints at military intervention.

To be sure, that doesn’t mean that the nations represented in Paris are ready to act in Syria as many did in Libya. But the acknowledgment of military intervention as an option is in itself important.

The conference also ended ambiguity over the role that the despot Bashar al-Assad might take in any transition to a new Syrian regime.

Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s “road map” would give Assad a veto on who is included in a transition government. But the Paris conference showed a growing consensus that Assad must be scripted out of any negotiated settlement. Even if he’s to be temporarily replaced by one of his deputies, Assad would have to step aside before a deal is sealed.

Russia and China, two of Assad’s last remaining supporters, declined their invitations to Paris. The third, Iran, wasn’t even invited. All three appear to be having doubts about the wisdom of supporting an unpopular leader who may also be doomed.

Russian and Chinese spokesmen now claim that neither Moscow nor Beijing is “committed to Assad as such.” As for Tehran, the mullahs seem to be preparing to ditch Assad before they host a summit of the nonaligned nations this fall.

Many nonaligned leaders, including new Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi, have indicated they’ll boycott the summit if Iran doesn’t alter its pro-Assad stance. If Tehran continues to back Assad, it could end up with high-level representation from only two Arab states, Sudan and Lebanon, at its summit.

Russia now seems a classic opportunist; it’s looking for ways to prevent the United States and its allies from scoring a point by helping remove Assad from power. But Moscow also knows that courting Assad risks antagonizing a majority of the 22 Arab states.

So the Kremlin is desperately looking for a way to portray itself on the side of change in Syria without actually producing the kind of change that Western powers wish for.

Much work remains. But don’t be surprised if Russia takes the lead in selling the idea of a “dignified departure” to Assad. In Yemen, a similar deal was sold to President Ali Abdullah Salih by his principal protector, Saudi Arabia.

What is needed urgently is an end to the bloodshed. And that can’t be achieved while Assad has a central role.

Meanwhile, the first high-level defection from Assad’s inner circle has increased the possibility of “change within the regime.” Brig.-Gen. Manaf Tlas, 43, is a former commander in the Presidential Guard and one of Assad’s closest personal friends. His father, Gen. Mustafa Tlas, was a founder of the Ba’athist regime and served as chief of staff and then defense minister for more than two decades under Bashar’s father, Hafiz al-Assad.

The younger Tlas flew to Paris yesterday; he claims he decided to break with the regime after Assad’s younger brother, Maher, also a brigadier-general, ordered a massacre in the central Syrian town of Rastan — the seat of the Tlas, a leading Sunni clan.

Tlas’ defection ends the myth of solidarity among the despot’s “inner circle. In Damascus, people are already wondering who will be next.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fresh_hope_for_an_end_to_syria_pain_Gv8bnk4d1UVOtllCZytnlO#ixzz1ztzlBQln

PARIS: The United States will lead calls at talks in Paris for a tough new UN sanctions regime to be imposed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his inner circle, US officials said Thursday.

Speaking as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flew to Paris for Friday’s Friends of Syria meeting, one official said it was time “to put this all together under a Security Council resolution that increases the pressure on Assad, including having real consequences” such as economic sanctions.

“We, and we believe most of the countries represented in Paris, think that has to include Chapter 7 economic sanctions on Assad,” the official said aboard Clinton’s plane and asking to remain anonymous, referring to a clause within the UN charter.

“Many of the countries in Paris already have those sanctions but globalising them will be very important. That is the argument that we will continue to make to Russia and China.”

The aim would be to keep up momentum, building on talks in Geneva last weekend and the Cairo and Paris talks, with the UN Security Council set to take up the sanctions issue as soon as next week.

“There’s already a lot of work being done in New York in terms of thinking through what this resolution might look like,” said another US official.

“The idea is to… go right away to New York there’s no wait-time. How long it will take for this all to be agreed, it’s hard to anticipate. But the work is already underway and the focus will be in New York next week as soon as we finish in Paris basically.”

Friday’s Friends of Syria meeting will bring together more than 80 nations, as well as non-governmental organizations and representatives of the Syrian opposition.

The US officials hailed a blueprint drawn up earlier this week by the Syrian opposition in talks held under the auspices of the Arab League in Cairo, which set out a clear plan for transition to a post-Assad era in Syria.

It also drew up the basis for a future constitution and governing system for the Arab nation, which has been ruled for decades by the Assad family and the Baath party.

According to the document, as soon as Assad steps down a new caretaker government would be installed to start the transtition process.

It would aim to bring together a “wide national conference” in Damascus to include all political powers and across all spectrums of society.

This conference would then set up a temporary legislative body to work on a new constitution and hold parliamentary elections within a year. Following that election, the new government would have to put the constitution to a referendum within six months.

“It’s a very explicit, almost a bill of rights in terms of each group. They all get to have their rights protected and their place in Syrian society without any split in the country, in the society, in the territory,” said the second US official.

The document also makes it clear that those people with “blood on their hands” would have no role in the next governments, although the US official said it would be up to the Syrian people to make that determination.

“It is not something that we would define or we would dictate,” the official said.

- AFP/fa

LONDON: WikiLeaks said Thursday it was publishing over two million emails from Syrian political figures dating back to 2006 but also covering the period of the crackdown on dissent by Syria’s regime.

“Just now… WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria files, more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies dating from August 2006 to March 2012,” said Sarah Harrison, spokeswoman for the anti-secrecy website.

The latest disclosures could throw fresh light on the workings of the Syrian regime and its interactions with allies in the run-up to and during the current bloody crackdown.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the 16 months of bloodshed in Syria have claimed more than 16,500 lives.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is currently holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London seeking political asylum, said in a written statement: “The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s external opponents.

“It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts.

“It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it.”

WikiLeaks said the first files, released on Wednesday, reveal that Italian defence giant Finmeccanica has provided communications equipment to the Syrian regime since the unrest began.

The communications system was provided by Finmeccanica’s subsidiary SELEX Elsag, in claims by WikiLeaks published by Italian magazine L’Espresso.

WikiLeaks’ announcement comes a day after Russia denied having discussed with Washington offering exile to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.

It also comes ahead of a meeting Friday in Paris of the “Friends of Syria” group of countries which support tougher action against Assad’s government.

WikiLeaks said the 2,434,899 emails came from Syrian ministries including foreign affairs, finance and presidential affairs. There are around 400,000 emails in Arabic but also 68,000 in Russian.

Harrison said WikiLeaks could not comment on the full contents of the release, which is being organised in collaboration with media partners in countries including the US, Lebanon, Egypt, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

“This is a large data set. It will take time for these stories to come out,” she said at a press conference in London announcing the release.

She refused to comment on how WikiLeaks had obtained the emails, telling AFP: “We never comment on our sourcing.”

The publication comes amid continued wrangling between world powers about how the bloody conflict in Syria should be tackled.

Russia has indicated it will stay away from the Paris meeting on Friday after accusing the West of seeking to distort a deal struck last weekend for a political transition in the violence-hit nation.

Moscow’s move to shun the gathering comes after UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan stressed that a ceasefire was imperative.

Assange, meanwhile, has been inside the Ecuadorian embassy since June 19 in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two female former WikiLeaks volunteers.

Assange denies the allegations, which he says are politically motivated. The 40-year-old Australian fears he could be extradited from Sweden to the United States, where he claims he could face the death penalty.

WikiLeaks enraged Washington in 2010 by publishing a flood of secret documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as more than 250,000 confidential US diplomatic cables that embarrassed a slew of governments.

The Syria files are WikiLeaks’ first major publication since it began disclosing internal emails from the US-based intelligence firm Stratfor in February.

WikiLeaks was forced to suspend many of its publishing operations last October after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to continue processing donations to the whistleblowing website.

- AFP/cc

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a US delegation to talks on the conflict in Syria being hosted by France this week, a US official confirmed Tuesday.

The “secretary will lead our delegation to the Friends of Syria meeting in Paris,” the State Department official told AFP, asking to remain anonymous.

The confirmation came just after France, which is hosting the third meeting of the group seeking to co-ordinate Western and Arab efforts to stop the violence in Syria, said Russia had refused to attend.

The United States, France, Britain, Germany, and Arab nations Saudi Arabia and Qatar are leading members of the Friends, whose more than 60 members include most of the EU states and many countries making up the Arab League.

Friday’s Paris talks will come less than a week after a gathering in Geneva endorsed a blueprint for a political transition in Syria, riven by 16 months of fighting against the iron-fisted regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Our hope and expectation is that many of the countries who were not able to participate in the Geneva meeting, but will now be at the Friends meeting in Paris, will have had a chance to study the document,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Monday.

They would be “able to add their voices to those of us who have already endorsed it as a strong way forward.”

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan drew up the plan which was adopted Saturday in Geneva, but it has been heavily criticized for not including a direct call for Assad to step down.

US officials have insisted that no future transitional government would include what they call “Assad and his cronies.”

Russia has backed the Geneva accord, but on Tuesday accused the West of seeking to “distort” the agreement for the political transition.

Nuland said Monday that it was hoped the countries attending the Paris talks would “give special envoy Kofi Annan their political support going forward.”

Thursday, 19 April 2012

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said that the U.N. observer mission in Syria would require between 300 and 400 people to oversee the country properly. (Reuters)

By Al Arabiya with Agencies