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| Kofi Annan, Lakhdar Brahimi and Mokhtar Lamani |
THE FACT: Joint UN-Arab League troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi will Friday
update the UN Security Council on the situation in Syria.
THE BUZZ: Brahimi hopes to be mandated as
a UN envoy without any official link to the Arab League.
THE WHISPER: Brahimi will Friday do a Kofi Annan and be relieved
by his deputy Mokhtar
Lamani.
Brahimi, who is
expected to offer the Security Council another bleak Syria report on Friday,
reportedly feels the Arab League’s recognition of the Syrian opposition has
undermined his role as a joint mediator.
"The joint special
representative feels the Arab League approach makes it difficult for him to
carry out his mandate," a diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"He feels that it
would be best to be associated only with the United Nations at this point to
ensure his neutrality."
There have been rumors
circulating for weeks that Brahimi might resign, though diplomats told Reuters his preference was to remain
involved in Syrian peace efforts through the United Nations, an organization he
has worked with for decades.
His predecessor, former
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, resigned last August in frustration at the
inability of the Security Council to unite behind his calls for an end to the
violence and a peaceful political transition
The Syrian Opposition
Coalition, recognized by the Arab League as the sole representative for Syria, attended
the Arab summit and opened its first embassy in Doha last month in a diplomatic
blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The
pro-Assad Lebanese daily, al-Akhbar, is
adamant today that Brahimi will
definitely tender his resignation on Friday, “leaving the task to his
second-in-command, Mokhtar Lamani.”
Al-Akhbar
journalist Radwan Mortada quotes unnamed sources as saying Brahimi’s
resignation at Friday’s closed session of the Security Council “is now
inevitable.” And Brahimi’s deputy Mokhtar Lamani would most likely take over
the Syria peace-brokering mission.
Distinguished
Moroccan career diplomat Lamani currently heads Brahimi’s Damascus office.
A
Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation
(CIGI, Canada, Ontario), Lamani served in 2006 as Special Representative of the
Arab League in Iraq, where he tried to persuade its bitterly
divided Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders to make peace. He failed and resigned
in February 2007.
Mortada
quotes extensively from a January 2007 think piece by al-Akhbar co-founder, the late Michel Samaha, blaming Lamani’s
resignation then on
feeble
support from the Arab governments that hired him.
In his Jan. 22, 2007,
resignation letter, a copy of which he gave to The Associated Press, Lamani
said of the Iraqi leaders: "My only problem was their own relations with
each other, their strong feeling that each is a victim of the other."
He also faulted the
Arab League member-states, telling AP they did not give Iraq "the
necessary priority or seriousness." Arab governments were so detached from
Iraq that it was "as if it were on the moon," he said.
