The internationally recognized representative of the
Syrian people is staying away from next week’s meeting in Jordan of the
11-nation core group of the “Friends of the Syrian people.”
Jordan’s
Foreign Ministry said yesterday the opposition would not be attending the
planned meeting “to coordinate positions in line with the recent U.S.-Russian
agreement to revive the political path to tackle the (Syria) crisis.”
Washington
and Moscow have proposed a peace conference between the Syrian regime of
President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition in the coming weeks to find a
political solution to the country’s civil war.
The core group of the “Friends of the Syrian people”
includes Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Italy, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the U.S.
Senior diplomats from
France, the U.S., the UK, Russia and China are also planning to meet in Paris
to discuss the U.S.-Russian initiative.
Expressing grave
concern at the continuing escalation of violence in Syria, the UN General
Assembly adopted overnight a resolution reiterating its call for rapid progress
on a political transition, “which represents the best opportunity to resolve
the situation […] peacefully.”
Adopted
by a vote of 107 in favor to 12 against (counting Syria, Russia and China),
with 59 abstentions (including Algeria, Lebanon and Sudan), the General Assembly
resolution also welcomed the establishment last year of the National Coalition
for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces “as effective representative
interlocutors needed for a political transition.”
The
State Department’s Patrick Ventrell had no explanation at yesterday’s press
briefing as to why the National Coalition was staying away from the meeting in
Jordan.
Q.: Patrick, Jordan has announced today that the Syrian opposition
will not attend the contact group meeting that will be held next week in
Jordan. Do you know why?
VENTRELL: I don’t. I’d refer you to Jordan for more details on their
conference. That’s something that the Secretary looks forward to attending. But
I don’t have any details on the final participation in that one way or another.
Q.: But it would be the first time that the opposition doesn’t
attend such a meeting.
VENTRELL: Again, I hadn’t seen that before coming down, so I’m not aware
of that information. But we’re appreciative of the Jordanians for willing to
organize the meeting.
Jockeying
Editorially,
Lebanese political analyst Abdelwahhab Badrakhan, writing in Arabic today
for the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, has
this eye-opener on the diplomatic jockeying ahead of the peace conference
proposed by the United States and Russia:
The Americans and Russians
have agreed not to disagree. Despite their different perceptions and
objectives, they are determined not to disagree on either Syria or nuclear
Iran.
At the same time, disagreements
over Russia’s aspirations in Georgia or the U.S. missile defense shield in
Europe remain possible and tangible.
Regarding Syria, Moscow was
allowed to sell advanced weapons to the regime to keep killing its people with
no questions asked. Moscow also won – in advance – recognition of its interests
in Syria and, by extension, in Lebanon plus the chance of making a comeback to
Egypt via the budding Egypt-Iran partnership.
By contrast, the U.S., which
won nothing in return, never sat idly on the sidelines of a crisis that matters
so much to her this long.
Washington offered zero
options to address the crisis, waiting instead for Benjamin Netanyahu to knock
at the Kremlin door to warn against the delivery of S-300 missiles that could
alter Israel’s military balance with Syria-Iran-Hezbollah.
U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry flew to Moscow May 5, seeking a new “understanding” on Syria –
“understanding” because the “agreement” has to wait for the summit meeting
between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin a month from now.
Britain’s David Cameron
followed Kerry to Russia, where he undertook to sponsor a multinational summit
to consecrate any final U.S.-Russian agreement.
In other words, efforts are in
full swing to crystallize an international consensus that would pave the way
for a UN Security Council resolution under Chapter VI.
The resolution would tell the
regime and the opposition to sit and negotiate on a “transitional government
with full powers,” which in hindsight should have come hot on the heels of the June
2012 Geneva Declaration.
After the Geneva Declaration,
Moscow kept insisting the document was the only way forward in Syria. But it
never said it could secure Assad’s commitment to transfer his full executive
powers to a transitional government. It kept arguing opposition and Friends of
Syria calls on Assad to step down made it impossible to convince him to sign a
power transfer order.
Moscow said lately it already got
the names of regime negotiators, who will be led by the prime minister, but
that the opposition remains disjointed and unrepresentative of all the regime’s
civilian and military adversaries.
The inbred defect in Moscow’s position
is its portrayal of a people’s revolution as “dissent” and the regime’s actions
as “natural.”
The U.S. and Russia are now at
the state where they decided, “Let us forget about Assad’s resignation and go
straight to a transitional government with full powers.”
But the problem is: How would
the proposed government get the full powers that Assad does not wish to hand
over?
The answer would have to be a
binding UN Security Council resolution under Chapter VII spelling out a
timeframe and likely retributions.
Moscow has not even started considering
such a course, having won enough rope from the U.S. to bury the pre-condition
of Assad resigning.
Despite all the diplomatic
jockeying and Washington continuing to bend over backwards, the obstacles to a
Syria transition are formidable.
Russia for instance is
staunchly standing by one of the regime’s own pre-conditions, which is not to
touch the army or security services. This means keeping the killing machine off
the negotiating table.
So how would a “transitional
government with full powers” govern without the basic military and security tools
of government?
For now, the “full powers”
remain firmly in Assad’s hand. They need to be wrested from him. He has not
been fighting to the death to surrender them readily. He will bargain over
them. And he will not facilitate any solution if terms are not discussed and
agreed with him.
Moreover, the relative
advances of his forces on the ground lately, and seeing the international
community whipping itself into a state of diplomatic frenzy to corner him,
might prompt Assad to activate his spoiler role.
That would be in the
traditional style of car
bombings in Turkey’s border town of Reyhanli, raids on Israel by
Palestinian proxies and export of the chaos and fighting to neighboring
countries.
