What was Syria troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi cooking
with senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva yesterday?
Apparently fish – and the editor-in-chief of the
leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat doesn’t
like the unpleasant odor.
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| Brahimi and Assad (top) and Lavrov and Clinton |
Tariq Alhomayed suspects the three sides are working
on a “distorted Yemen template” for the endgame in Syria that would keep
President Bashar al-Assad in place until 2014.
Brahimi
said in a statement the meeting with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail
Bogdanov and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns was “constructive and
held in a spirit of cooperation.
“It explored avenues to
move forward a peaceful process and mobilize greater international action in favor
of a political solution to the Syrian crisis.
“All three parties
reaffirmed their common assessment that the situation in Syria was bad and
getting worse. They stressed that a political process to end the crisis in
Syria was necessary and still possible.”
Sunday's meeting followed
talks held last week in Dublin between Brahimi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at which the three officials
agreed on the urgent need to initiate a political process to end the conflict
in Syria.
Participants at yesterday's
meeting agreed that a political solution would be based on the core elements of
the communiqué issued by the Action Group that met in Geneva on June 30.
The communiqué called
for “The establishment of a transitional governing
body, which can establish a neutral environment in which the transition can
take place. That means that the transitional governing body would exercise full
executive powers. It could include members of the present government and the
opposition and other groups and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.”
(See full text of the communiqué in my
June 30 post, “Syria
Action Group leaves open Assad question”)
The Action Group is
made up of the UN and Arab League secretaries-general; the foreign ministers of
the five permanent members of the Security Council and of Turkey, Qatar, Iraq
and Kuwait; and the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs
and security policy.
In his
leader for today’s edition of Asharq
Alawsat, which I paraphrase below, Alhomayed writes:
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby
promises the Syria crisis is drawing to an end.
The Qataris in turn are optimistic about
an American-Russian rapprochement regarding Syria following the Geneva meeting.
So what’s happening?
Sources tell me a Russian proposal is on
the table whereby a transitional government is set up. Assad would have no
powers over it and it would exclude anyone from his regime whose hands are
stained with Syrian blood.
A prominent member of the opposition would
head such a transitional government. Accordingly, Assad would stay put in
Damascus until 2014. He would not run in the 2014 presidential elections. He
would simply call it a day and go home. That’s the scenario I heard.
Of course, the Russians keep reiterating
their stance on Syria.
So my question is: If the Russians are not
changing their position, insisting they are not holding talks on the fate of
embattled Assad, why are the Americans and Brahimi meeting with them? Why are
the Qataris and Elaraby optimistic?
Elaraby says he hopes the U.S. and Russia
can reconcile their views over Syria in order to prepare a resolution for the UN
Security Council, which “will send a clear message to the (Assad) regime that
it is no longer protected.” He also says the Syrian opposition could be a
substitute for the regime in due time.
So what justifies the optimism and the
statements if the Russian position remains unchanged?
In light of the aforesaid, there’s
obviously an attempt to apply in Syria today the Gulf template used in Yemen.
But the template has been distorted, presumably to preempt Assad’s recourse to
chemical weapons.
Obviously, it is a waste of time if in
fact Brahimi and the American and Russian officials are considering a
transitional government that keeps Assad at the helm until 2014.
That would also be an effort to absolve
Assad of all the crimes he committed, instead of showing him the door.
Syrians would find it adequate if Assad’s
exit to this or that safe haven were synchronized with the kickoff of the
transition.
But waiting until 2014 means bailing out
Assad and recognizing him as president despite the death toll on his watch. Such
a solution is surely unenforceable.
A solution that sees Assad stepping down
and staying in Syria – à la Abdullah
Saleh, who stayed in Yemen after standing down as president – is also totally
unacceptable.
With the Free Syrian Army now positioned
at the doorsteps of Damascus, and Assad’s regime on its knees, it is difficult
to fathom a solution to the Syria crisis that does not see Assad hitting the
road – not in one or two years, but now.
