Bandar back in Moscow for Geneva-2 bazaar

Prince Bandar and President Putin last July 31

Saudi Arabia’s spymaster Prince Bandar bin Sultan arrived in Moscow today for his second round of talks in four months with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

News of his arrival in the Russian capital was broken this afternoon by Khaled al-Matrafi, regional director of Saudi-owned TV news channel Alarabiya.

Prince Bandar’s visit to the Kremlin comes less than a month since Putin, a strong backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, called Saudi King Abdullah to discuss international efforts to end the Syria crisis.

Russia last month sharply criticized Saudi Arabia's decision to reject membership of the UN Security Council over the body's failure to resolve the Syria war, which has been fought for over two-and-a-half years.

The most significant recent contact between Moscow and Riyadh was a meeting between Putin and Prince Bandar last July 31.

I assume the new round of Putin-Bandar talks opens the bazaar between the pair over the upcoming Geneva-2 peace conference slated for January 22.

After Khalidiya, is Assad winning the Syria war?

Dramatic images of destruction in Khalidiya

Hyped media reports that the regime of President Bashar al-Assad is winning the Syria war are misplaced, according to Egyptian military and strategy expert Safwat el-Zayyat.

The reports follow the fall of Khalidiya, a neighborhood in Homs city, to Syrian government forces backed by Shiite militiamen from Lebanon, Iran and Iraq.

Seven weeks earlier, these combined forces retook Qusayr, a town some 35 kilometers from Homs city on Syria’s border with Lebanon.

Zayyat said in his live, four-minute military news analysis for Aljazeera TV channel last night:

The regime is not in a position to contend with two battlefronts at the same time.

After retaking Qusayr (on June 5), the regime turned swiftly to Aleppo.

News agencies started saying regime and Hezbollah forces were knocking on Aleppo city’s door and preparing to overrun the nearby villages of Nubul and Zahra.

Four days later, we saw regime and Hezbollah forces refocusing on Homs, instead.

Homs city has been under siege for 442 days.

It took the regime 442 days to forces its way into just one of the city’s numerous neighborhoods – namely, Khalidiya.

I believe the armed opposition’s unified command gives priority to the attrition war.

For now, it is concentrating on the Aleppo and Deraa fronts.

More thrilling perhaps is the Damascus front, where the armed opposition seems to have decided to switch its main thrust from Eastern Ghouta to try and reach Abbasid Square, (a landmark plaza) in central Damascus.

Also, three days ago, regime forces were set to swoop on Qaboun (a neighborhood of Damascus held by the rebels).

Suddenly, regime forces pulled back from around Qaboun and Jobar and started evacuating citizens from the Qassaa, Ghassani, Qusur, Fares el-Khoury and al-Tijari areas of Damascus to safer neighborhoods in the capital, including Muhajereen and Ruknuddin.

The closer the armed opposition gets to the center of Damascus, the less likely the regime’s recourse to carpet shelling and bombing of the capital’s rebel-held areas.  

On the Aleppo province front in northern Syria, the armed opposition captured the key town of Khan al-Asal six days ago.

They have since seized Dhahret Abd Rabbo and are no more than 200 meters away from the Air Force Intelligence building there.

Dhahret Abd Rabbo will allow the armed opposition to control the Aleppo-Aintab motorway, which links them to Aleppo city, Nubul, Zahra and Minnigh all the way to the border crossing (with Turkey) at Bab al-Salam.

The opposition’s advances in Deraa province are even more spectacular.

The rebels now hold the major towns of Nawa, Inkhil and Jassem there.

The entire city of Idlib will come under their control once they flush out regime forces from the neighborhood of Manshiyeh.

Assad: I’ll run for a third term in 2014

Assad was interviewed at his palace library room

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has poured cold water on prospects of an international conference for peace in Syria proposed earlier this month by the United States and Russia.

He also told Argentina’s Clarín newspaper in an exclusive interview he would run for a third seven-year term in the June 2014 presidential election.

I excerpted the salient remarks made by Assad from the library of his palace in Damascus to Clarín's reporter Marcelo Cantelmi. Here goes:

ASSAD SPEAKING:

Multiple factors make the Syria crisis intricate and long-drawn-out. The foremost cause is foreign meddling, which we are resisting so as to protect Syria.

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The death of any Syrian is a tragic loss but the death toll figures being spread around are inflated. There is no precise death toll figure to quote, but many of those killed were foreigners who came to Syria to kill Syrians.

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Without defining the term “excessive force,” you can’t determine whether government forces used it. Generally, the state’s response has been commensurate with the level of terrorism used against it. The more sophisticated the terrorists get, the more intense the response of our military and security forces.

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Our political reform measures -- including the endorsement of a new constitution, the lifting of the state of emergency and the initiation of a national dialogue with opposition political parties -- were met by amplification of the terror.

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Terrorism can never be an implement for reforms. What interest does a wanted terrorist from Chechnya or Afghanistan have with the internal political reform process in Syria? There are foreign fighters from different 29 nationalities now engaged in terrorist activities in Syria.

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Have the United States or European countries ever negotiated with terrorists? Dialogue is with legitimate political entities and a conventional opposition, not with terrorist groups.

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We support every effort to stop the violence in Syria and every endeavor that would lead to a political solution. We welcome the Russian-American understanding and look forward to an international parley to help Syrians overcome the crisis. But I don’t think many Western nations genuinely want a Syria solution. Powers backing the terrorists don’t want a solution either – they’ve already shot down the Russian-American agreement by rejecting dialogue with the Syrian state. While we support and welcome the Russian-American initiative, we have to be realistic. After all, it takes two to tango.

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The offshore opposition you mention is not independent. It is funded by foreign countries and lives under the shadow of their respective intelligence agencies. If the offshore opposition groups had a popular homegrown following they would be sitting in Syria. Still, they have officially come out against dialogue. Only last week, they said clearly they don’t want to negotiate with the Syrian state.

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We’re open to dialogue with everyone, except terrorists. There is a universal mix-up between terrorism and a political solution. They think a political conference would lead to a cessation of violence, which is wide of the mark. So long as countries like Qatar, Turkey and others have no interest in stopping violence and in a political solution in Syria, terrorism will continue. What an international conference can do is to stop the inflow of terrorists from Turkey and cash from Qatar and other Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia.

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Israel backs these terrorist gangs in two ways (1) logistical help, such as tending to the wounded terrorists on the Syrian side of the Golan front, and (2) directives on how to mount their attacks and what sites to target. For instance, it directed them to target a radar site belonging to an air defense system against incoming warplanes in case of a Syria-Israel war.

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The West brings up the subject of combatants from Iran and Hezbollah in Syria whenever we broach the subject of foreign fighters. Syria has a population of 23 million and does not need manpower help from any other country. We don’t need anyone from Iran or Hezbollah to help us. Our relations with them are manifest and decades old.

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Whether I remain in office or leave depends on the Syrian people. As a president, it is not my personal decision to stay or leave. You can’t rule without the people’s support. The decision belongs to the ballot box. People will decide on this in the 2014 presidential elections. But for America or the terrorists or some other nations to order the Syrian president to go is unacceptable.

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I don’t know if (U.S. Secretary of State) John Kerry or anyone else received a mandate from the Syrian people to speak on their behalf as to whether someone should stay or go. Syria is an independent state. Any decision about reforms in Syria will come from Syria and neither the U.S. nor any other state can decide what we do. Besides, the country is in crisis and a captain does not abandon a ship facing a storm at sea. In any case, to resign would be to flee and I am not the kind of person to shun responsibility.

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International monitoring of the 2014 presidential elections is not a decision I can make alone. It’s a national decision.  Some people believe it would violate Syria’s national sovereignty. Others simply do not trust the West for this task. And others would want observers from friendly countries, such as Russia or China.

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The West’s statements on the use of chemical weapons change every day – there is proof, there is some proof, there is no proof etc… Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction. The West claims we used them in populated centers. When you hear of a nuclear bomb killing 10 or 20 people, can you believe that? Using chemical weapons in urban areas would mean killing thousands or tens of thousands of people in a matter of minutes. Who could hide something like that? Why did the West shrug off Carla del Ponte’s statement saying terrorists used chemicals?

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Any war on Syria won’t be easy. They know this. They know it won’t be a picnic.

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Intervention is a clear probability, especially after we managed to beat back the armed groups in many areas of Syria. Israeli airstrikes were used, for example, to raise the terrorist groups’ morale. We expect an intervention at some point, albeit limited in nature.

"Obama's failure in Syria"

The following appears today in the Washington Post

By Richard Cohen

There are two kinds of wars, we are told — wars of choice and wars of necessity. The former is to be avoided and the latter fought with appropriate reluctance. World War II was a good and necessary war but Vietnam was not. The war in Iraq was a matter of choice (also of imbecility) but Afghanistan was not — although it now may be. Wars can change over time. The one in Syria certainly has. It has gone from a war of choice to a war of necessity that President Obama did not choose to fight. A mountain of dead testifies to his mistake.

More than 60,000 people have been killed, most of them civilians. An estimated 650,000 refugees have fled across Syria’s various borders. They live in miserable conditions, soaked and frozen by the chilling rains of the Mediterranean winter, caked in mud. Children have died. More children will die.

The war threatens to destabilize a whole region. The Kurds in Syria’s north are restless. The Palestinians, refugees in Syria from their one-time homeland, are refugees yet again in Jordan. Lebanon is awash with Syrians, fellow Muslims but often of a different sort. The ethnic nitroglycerin of that country — an unstable mixture of Sunnis and Shiites, various Christians and Druze — looks increasingly fragile. All Lebanese are mental census takers: Has their group increased or decreased, and what does it mean?

And what of Bashar al-Assad, the unimpressive son of a frighteningly impressive father? Will he seek exile in Moscow, possibly rooming with that vulgarian, Gerard Depardieu? Not likely. Assad will retreat to the Alawite redoubt and the slaughter will continue. Bloodbath will follow bloodbath, a settling of scores from the recent past, the distant past and — just for good measure — the imagined future: Kill before you can be killed. It’s the earliest form of hedging.

I am talking about a misery that beggars description. I am talking of infants dying of dysentery and the old taking one last feeble step. I am talking about barbarity that always accompanies civil war and I am talking, finally, of a catastrophe that could have been avoided. A little muscle from NATO, which is to say the United States, could have put an end to this thing early on. The imposition of a no-fly zone, as was done in Libya, would not only have grounded Syrian airplanes and helicopters but also have convinced the military and intelligence services early on that Assad was doomed and the outcome was not in doubt. At that time there were places he could have gone.

But the White House was resolute in its irresolution. A presidential campaign was on, and it was no time for foreign adventures. Iraq was winding down; with any luck, Afghanistan would too. The United States had no dog in the Syrian fight and, besides, Washington — in an admission of incompetence — could not tell the good guys from the bad guys. Waiting cleared things up. Now the bad guys (jihadists and others) are more in control and the moderates have, as moderates usually do, lost out to radicals. Procrastination, as well as the prospect of one’s hanging, clarifies the mind.

In retrospect, this was a war of necessity. It was necessary to avoid a regional calamity, the spread of more violence to Lebanon and Iraq. It was necessary to avoid a humanitarian disaster; great suffering that could have been avoided or at least mitigated. It was necessary to take a stand against barbarity because this is — is it not? — a basic obligation. It was necessary to intervene because we could do so at very little cost. To do what you can when you can might not have the Metternichian ring of a Great Strategic Doctrine, but it has the force of common sense. It is both compelling and workable. We are talking, simply, of saving lives.

It was necessary, finally, because not only must the thugs of this world be held accountable by the world community, they must know they will be held accountable by the world community. The indiscriminate shelling of cities and towns must not be tolerated. The purposeful killing of journalists must not be tolerated. The people of any country are not chattel to be treated any way their government wants. This — a furious sense of moral indignation — must return to U.S. foreign policy and be the centerpiece of Obama’s second term. This is no longer a matter of choice. It is a necessity.

Obama recognizes the Syrian National Coalition

President Obama with Barbara Walters (ABC News photo)

In a diplomatic shift, U.S. President Barack Obama said overnight his administration now formally recognizes the newly formed Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces that is fighting to topple Syria's embattled President Bashar al-Assad.

"We've made a decision that the Syrian Opposition Coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime," Obama said.

The announcement, made during an exclusive interview with ABC News' Barbara Walters, grants new legitimacy to the rebel group and marks a new phase in U.S. efforts to isolate the Assad regime.

"It's a big step," Obama said of the decision. The United States follows France and Britain, both of which last month recognized the Syrian opposition group.

The diplomatic designation will allow the United States to more closely support rebel efforts, including the organization of a future post-Assad government, administration officials said.

"Obviously, with that recognition comes responsibilities," Obama said of the young coalition. "To make sure that they organize themselves effectively, that they are representative of all the parties, [and] that they commit themselves to a political transition that respects women's rights and minority rights."

The move does not include the provision of arms, but it opens the door for that possibility in the future.

"Providing arms has to be done in a way that helps promote a political solution," one senior Obama administration official is quoted as saying by ABC News. "And until we understand how these arms promote a political solution, we do not see how provision of arms is a good idea."

But the official added, "the president has never ruled out in the future providing arms."

Obama expressed caution in the interview about some Syrian factions involved with the coalition, warning that the United States will not support extremist elements.

"Not everybody who's participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people who we are comfortable with," Obama told Walters. "There are some who, I think, have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda, and we are going to make clear to distinguish between those elements."

The president specifically singled out the group Jabhat al-Nusrah for its alleged affiliation with al- Qaeda in Iraq. The State Department says the jihadist group is responsible for nearly 600 violent attacks in major Syrian cities in the past year.

"Through these attacks, al-Nusrah has sought to portray itself as part of the legitimate Syrian opposition while it is, in fact, an attempt by [al-Qaeda in Iraq] to hijack the struggles of the Syrian people for its own malign purposes," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The Obama administration blacklisted al-Nusrah earlier this week, imposing economic sanctions and branding it a terrorist organization.

Recognition of the Syrian rebel group has been expected. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was to formally announce the new relations with the United States during a meeting of international allies supporting Syria's rebels in Marrakech, Morocco, on Wednesday.

She has since cancelled her trip because of an illness. Her deputy, William Burns, will attend in her place.

The Voice of Russia’s Olga Denisova cites the country’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying Washington’s move to recognize Syria’s National Coalition proves the U.S. had made a stake on its armed victory.

"America’s recognition of the National Coalition as Syria’s legitimate authority violates the Geneva agreement. It is an 'unexpected turn',” he said at a meeting with his Slovak counterpart, Miroslav Lajcák.

Lavrov stressed Russia was going to inquire into US’s aims and their vision of the region’s future.

Lakhdar Brahimi and Syria’s Rivers of Blood

Death counts from the Syrian Shuhada site

A total of 12,819 Syrians – 1,126 of them children and 1,244 females – were killed on Kofi Annan’s watch during his Syria troubleshooting mission between April 12 and August 19 this year.

The big question is how many more Syrian men, women and children will die before his successor Lakhdar Brahimi fails or succeeds in his role as new UN-Arab League envoy on Syria.

The Syrian Revolution Data Base, Syrian Shuhada (Syrian Martyrs), referred to by some branches of the United Nations, puts at 29,396 the total number of civilians and military killed in the 534-day Syria bloodbath up to September 1^st.

Of these, 6,438 Syrians – or almost 22 percent of the total -- were killed in the month of August alone.

The main reason the numbers by Syrian Shuhada are high is because it counts unidentified bodies.

So in terms of per capita ratio, the total Syria death toll between mid-March 2011 and end-August 2012 translates to about 203,000 Russians or 433,000 Americans!

As he takes up his post, Brahimi has given a deeply pessimistic view of the task ahead of him.

He tells Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent, BBC News, in an exclusive interview in New York:

“I’m coming into this job with my eyes open, and no illusions. I know how difficult it is -- how nearly impossible. I can’t say impossible -- [it is] nearly impossible.”

Brahimi admitted some trepidation about his new mission, saying he could understand those frustrated with the lack of international action in Syria.

“I'm scared of the weight of responsibility. People are already saying people are dying and what are you doing?

“And we are not doing much. That in itself is a terrible weight.”

Brahimi said he had so far failed to see “any cracks” in the “brick wall” that had defeated Annan -- an “intransigent” Syrian government, escalating rebel violence and a paralyzed UN Security Council, where China and Russia have vetoed several resolutions aimed at putting pressure on Damascus.

 A growing number of Syrians have fled abroad to escape the conflict.

He said he would keep Annan's six-point peace plan -- now seen by many as irrelevant -- in his “tool box” for possible adaptation, but admitted he “had ideas, but no plan yet,” apart from talking to as many people as possible.

Addressing the Syrian government, he said the need for political change in Syria was “fundamental and urgent,” but -- as he has previously -- refused to be drawn on whether President Assad should step down, as the opposition and several Western leaders are demanding.

“Change cannot be cosmetic,” he said. “There will be a new order but I do not know who will be the people in the order. That’s for Syrians to decide.”

He also sought to keep a distance between himself and the rebels, who have criticized him for his cautious stance.

“Please remember I am not joining your movement,” he said. “I am working for two international organizations, the United Nations and the Arab League, and I do not speak the same language as you.”

Ghassan Charbel, editor-in-chief of the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, notes in his leader today that Annan, in his parting shots, took aim at President Assad and at Russia and China. “He asked the former to step aside and blamed the latter pair for stopping the Security Council from speaking with one voice.”

Charbel adds:

Brahimi was closely watching Annan’s mission. He was aware of the locked Syrian, Iranian and Russian doors. People familiar with his modus operandi say he won’t travel around like his predecessor carrying a peace plan abridged in points.

He won’t hurry to place his cards on the table. Above all, “he won’t offer food to those who feel satiated.”

Brahimi can’t impose a solution and won’t start promoting the outlines of one. Most probably, he will play for patience and anticipation.

He can’t mediate seriously before the two parties to the Syria conflict feel “hungry” – “hungry” for an exit, that is.

His role can’t start in earnest before the two adversaries realize their chance of a knockout win is implausible, impossible and prohibitively costly.

Maybe Brahimi is playing for weariness and despair creeping to the two rivals’ hearts.

The regime would concede that it can’t win back control of the whole country; that persisting in the confrontation compounds future risks to allies fighting on its side; that victory is beyond reach, even with sustained Iranian and Russian support.

The regime would conclude in that case that it must search for a way out, even if the expected medicine is bitter or debilitating.

Perhaps Brahimi is also betting on the opposition eventually concluding (1) that a triumph is impossible without external military intervention, which doesn’t seem in the cards or attractive to world powers capable of mounting one (2) or that the bloody clash has turned into one among the country’s components, when experience shows that infighting among components allows scoring points but precludes decisive blows (3) or that such a clash among components risks killing the country’s unity and territorial integrity first and foremost (4) or that a protracted showdown  risks turning Syria into a regional sectarian war theater, which the opposition shuns because it is fighting to build a new Syria whose components would coexist in a democratic, free and egalitarian state.

The aforesaid leads to the painful conclusion that for his mission to succeed Brahimi needs new rivers of blood, additional waves of refugees to neighboring countries and more gruesome massacres, devastated villages and shattered neighborhoods.

To succeed, Brahimi needs the two sides to give up hope of a knockout win and to feel “hungry” for a way out of the blood-soaked tunnel.

He also needs Vladimir Putin to acknowledge that his excessive reliance on the spoiler’s role risks isolating and seriously undermining Russia’s image and interests in the Arab and Islamic worlds and internationally.

Brahimi likewise needs Iran to recognize that it cannot safeguard its past decade’s surge and has to ponder such things as damage limitations, likely compensations and private regional consultations.

I know, Charbel concludes, mine are harsh words falling on the ears of those who lost their loved ones, their livelihoods and their dreams. But everything points to the cycle of violence mounting before Brahimi can start handing out wound dressings, guarantees and visions to new Syria’s components.

Syria: Can Annan’s new rabbit fly?

Much like a magician, Kofi Annan, the international troubleshooter for Syria, has pulled a second rabbit out of his hat.

It took about three months for his much-trumpeted six-point peace plan to be declared dead and buried together with more than 3,000 Syrian men, women and children.

We’re now into his more ambitious brainchild – a roadmap for establishing “a transitional unity government in Syria” to be discussed tomorrow in Geneva.

Nice try. But, in my opinion, this new rabbit just won’t fly either.

Raghida Dergham, the political analyst and diplomatic correspondent in Washington and at UN headquarters in New York for pan-Arab daily al-Hayat, does not exactly share my view and hedges her bets on Annan’s new blueprint.

However, wondering in her weekly column if tomorrow’s meeting in Geneva would deliver a political solution in Syria under Russian auspices, she remarks: “Kofi Annan himself would be putting his plan and his mission in jeopardy if he kept spending time on patching the big powers’ relations while conditions on the ground in Syria continue going from bad to worse…”

Emile Khoury, another Lebanese political analyst writing for the Beirut daily an-Nahar, notes, “If tomorrow’s meeting in Geneva does not yield a solution based on Annan’s roadmap, or a Russian-American tradeoff whereby the U.S. removes Assad and Russia names his replacement, Syria would turn into a battleground for proxy wars that wouldn’t end before the country came apart at the seams.”

Annan outlined his roadmap to the parties meeting in Geneva in a non-paper, or a text for negotiation, entitled “On Guidelines and Principles of a Syrian-led transition.” UN correspondent Nabil Abi Saab was able to obtain the document and publish it overnight on his blog UN Report.

Here is what it states:

Guidelines and Principles for a Syrian-led Transition

“Any political settlement must deliver to the people of Syria a transition that:

- Offers a perspective for the future that can be shared by all in Syria;

-- Establishes clear steps according to a firm timetable towards the realization of that perspective;

-- Can be implemented in a climate of safety for all, stability and calm;

-- Is reached rapidly without further bloodshed and violence and is credible.

1. Perspective for the Future

The aspirations of the people of Syria have been clearly expressed by the wide range of Syrians I have consulted. There is an overwhelming wish for a state that:

-- Is genuinely democratic and pluralistic, giving space to established and newly emerging political actors to compete fairly and equally in elections. This also means that the commitment to multiparty democracy must be lasting one, going beyond an initial round of elections.

-- Complies with international standards on human rights, the independence of the judiciary, accountability of those in government and the rule of law. It is not enough just to enunciate such a commitment. There must be mechanisms available to the people to ensure that commitments are kept by those in authority.

-- Offers equal opportunities and chances for all. There is no room for sectarianism or discrimination on ethnic, religious, linguistic or any other grounds. Numerically smaller communities must be assured that their rights will be respected.

 2. Clear Steps in the Transition

The conflict in Syria will only end when all sides are assured that there is a peaceful way towards a common future for all in Syria. It is therefore essential that any settlement provides for clear and irreversible steps in transition according to a fixed time frame. The key steps in any transition include:

-- The establishment of a Transitional Government of National Unity, which can establish a neutral environment in which the transition can take place. That means that the Government of National Unity would exercise full executive powers. It could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups, but would exclude from government those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation.

-- It is for the people to determine the future of the country. All groups and segments of society in Syria must be enabled to participate in a National Dialogue process. That process must not only be inclusive, it must also be meaningful, that is to say, its key outcomes must be implemented.

-- On this basis, there can be a review of the constitutional order and the legal system. The result of constitutional drafting would be subject to popular approval.

-- Once the new constitutional order is established, it is necessary to prepare for and conduct free and fair multiparty elections for the new institutions and offices that have been established.

-- Women must be fully represented in all aspects of the transition.

3. Safety, stability and calm

Any transition involves change. However it is essential to ensure that the transition can be implemented in a way that assures the safety of all in an atmosphere of stability and calm. This requires:

-- Consolidation of full calm and stability. All parties must cooperate with the Transitional Government of National Unity in ensuring the permanent cessation of violence. This includes completion of withdrawals and addressing the issue of the disarming, demobilization and reintegration of armed groups.

-- Effective steps to ensure that vulnerable groups are protected and immediate action is taken to address humanitarian issues in areas of need. It is also necessary to ensure that the release of the detained is completed rapidly.

-- Continuity of governmental institutions and qualified staff. The public services must be preserved or restored. This includes the military forces and security services. However, all governmental institutions, including the. intelligence services, have to perform according to human rights and professional standard and operate under a top leadership that inspires public confidence, under the control of the Transitional Government of National Unity.

-- Commitment to Accountability and National Reconciliation. Accountability for acts committed during the present conflict must be addressed. There also needs to be a comprehensive package for transitional justice, including compensation of rehabilitation for victims of the present conflict, steps towards national reconciliation and forgiveness.

4. Rapid steps to come to a Credible Political Agreement

It is for the people of Syria to come to a political agreement, but time is running out. It is clear that:

-- The sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Syria must be respected.

-- The conflict must be resolved through peaceful dialogue and negotiation alone. Conditions conducive to a political settlement must now be put in place.

-- There must be an end to bloodshed. All parties must re-commit themselves credibly to the six-point plan. This must include a cessation of armed violence in 'all its forms and immediate, credible and visible actions to implement items 2-6 of the six-point plan.

-- All parties must now engage genuinely with the Joint Special Envoy. The parties must be prepared to put forward effective interlocutors to work expeditiously towards a Syrian-led settlement that meets the legitimate aspirations of the people. The process must be fully inclusive to ensure that the views of all segments of Syrian society are heard in shaping the political settlement for the transition.

-- The organized international community, including the members of the Action Group stands ready to offer significant support for the implementation of an agreement reached by the parties. This may include an international assistance presence under a United Nations Mandate if requested. Significant funds will be available to support reconstruction and rehabilitation.”