President Bashar al-Assad is just about to go on air
and announce his roadmap for a political settlement to end the Syria war.
His two semi-official mouthpieces in Lebanon – al-Akhbar daily and Hezbollah’s
al-Manar portal – carry the report (authored by Nasser Sharara) saying Assad’s
five-point roadmap for a political transition is based on the Geneva
Declaration of June 2011 (see post, “Syria
Action Group leaves open Assad question”).
Sharara says the Syrian president’s peace plan, has
already been communicated to Moscow and suggests the following:
If there
are no objections to his joining other candidates in running for the
presidential elections in 2014, Assad agrees to the roadmap dubbed Geneva Two.
Its
provisions are:
1. A
ceasefire
2. Deployment
of international observers to oversee the plan’s implementation
3. Establishment
of a founding committee to amend the Constitution
4. Formation
of a National Unity Government
5. Free
parliamentary elections under international supervision
Sharara quotes regime sources as saying they would prefer
equal representation of “Independents, Baathists and Opposition” in the
national unity government, each group getting one-third of the members.
The sources also float the name of academic and human
rights activist Haytham
al-Manna’ to head the transitional government.
The report expects Assad’s plan to be discussed at a
meeting later this month of the three Bs: U.S. Undersecretary of State William
Burns, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and international envoy
Lakhdar Brahimi.
The report says Assad might reiterate in his “peace
plan address” that Syrian upholds the causes of Palestine and Lebanon and their
resistance groups and its right to claim back the occupied Golan Heights from
Israel and Iskenderun
(formerly Alexandretta) from Turkey.
