Minutes of Assad-Annan new truce deal

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Known as Syria’s mouthpiece, Beirut’s daily al-Akhbar has a proven record of privileged access to authoritative news and views from Damascus.

Today, the paper’s front-page screamer consists of four words: “The Assad-Annan agreement.”

Though bylined Jean Aziz, the front-page lead actually highlights what I deem to be the minutes of the meeting between UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan and President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Monday, July 9.

Jean Aziz is a Lebanese socio-political activist, journalist, university professor and talk show host. He is now close to Michel Aoun, Christian leader of Lebanon’s Free Patriotic Movement and a maverick ally of both Syria and Hezbollah.

Here is what I believe was passed on to Aziz by Damascus:

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The meeting between President Assad and UN Special Envoy Annan lasted an hour and a half.

The atmosphere was relaxed. There was no mention of the UN mission’s failure or of the tough talk by the (July 6 “Friends of Syria”) conference in Paris. Both sides spoke of the situation on the ground “in order to put in place a specific mechanism for a ceasefire” and of the coveted political dialogue between the Syrian government and its opponents.

Jean Aziz

The meeting between President Assad and Special Envoy Annan, both renowned to be courteous was in the presence of Gen. Robert Mood, head of UNSMIS, and Martin Griffith, head of the UN mission in Syria.

Annan started the conversation by saying he had been following the Syrian president’s recent interviews with the German TV network (ARD) and Turkey’s Gumhuriyet daily, remarking: “It seems, Mr. President, you’ve been increasing your media exposure of late.”

Assad replied with a smile on his face: “That’s true. The reason is twofold. One, I am the type of person who prefers to act then talk. Two, I noticed lately there is an almost total blackout on the facts and a good deal of manipulation and distortion of realities and events. That’s why I thought it was my duty to speak up.”

Annan grasped the hint and said he was aware of the difference between happenings on the ground and fictional scenarios and concocted impressions being broadcast.

Annan then started his official presentation, saying: “Mr. President, I thought it was my duty after the (June 30 “Action Group on Syria”) conference we held in Geneva, and in the countdown to my July 20-21 briefing of the UN Security Council, to meet with you and update you on what we did and what we need to follow through.”

It was obvious from his opening sentence that Annan did not want to mention the Paris conference from far or near. No did he wish to dwell on the post-Paris hype.

Annan went further, seizing the opportunity to reiterate his and the UN’s adherence to his six-point plan. He explicitly told his presidential host the Geneva conference declaration did no more than endorse his six-point initiative, adding: “I am sure you know, Mr. President, that what actually took place in Geneva does not tally with the ensuing interpretations and explanations that sought to distort and expound on what was approved at the conference.”

The implication is that Annan was fully endorsing the post-Geneva Russian stand vis-à-vis the Western allies’ position.

Annan then moved on to talk about conditions on the ground in Syria and about the UN observer mission, dwelling on the tragic situation in some areas and thus the urgency of implementing his initiative’s key point – namely, the cessation of violence.

Assad was considerate and totally receptive, offering a brief recap of his guest’s mission since it went into force on April 12. He recounted how the (government’s) armed forces complied with the ceasefire for 24 hours until the insurgents, as attested in the UN observers’ reports, breached it.

During Assad’s recap, Gen. Mood was seen nodding his head approvingly more than once.

Annan took stock of Assad’s words, saying there was every reason to renew the drive for a ceasefire – particularly that the explosive situation in Syria risked spilling over to other countries. He specifically mentioned a likely spillover to Lebanon.

“So let’s try again, let’s agree a mechanism for a ceasefire starting with any one of the (Syrian) hotspots. We can then duplicate it in another,” Annan suggested.

Once again, Assad proved fully amenable before asking his guests: “We are a state, government and official authority, which means when we give you our word on a ceasefire we become accountable to you. But who will you be negotiating with on the other side?”

At this point, Annan began answering together with Gen. Mood.

The pair explained that UN observers were able in the course of their mission to make a semi-comprehensive appraisal of the armed groups.

Annan and Mood said, “We at least got to know the major groups. We got to know their chiefs. True, they don’t have a unified command or a clear command structure. Their armed chaos is massive. But we got to know their key figures. That’s why we believe we can work and proceed with them step by step.”

Again, it was clear both men now describe regime opponents as “the armed opposition.”

Annan was reminded at this point how armed insurgents foiled earlier ceasefire attempts, chiefly in Homs.

“Not long ago,” Annan was told, “ your observers witnessed how some armed elements tried leaving Homs’ al-Khalidiya neighborhood to hand in their weapons and surrender. Other rebels stopped them from this. Your observers also saw first-hand how armed insurgents frustrated attempts to evacuate some citizens trapped in Homs’ Dayyan and Hamidiya neighborhoods.”

Griffith corroborated this as an eyewitness himself.

The UN delegates did not dispute their host’s remarks. But Annan went on to state: “Nevertheless, the situation being what it is, let’s try again. Our observers would reach an agreement with the armed groups in the area where we choose to start. At the same time, we would ask for a goodwill gesture on your part in the chosen area. The gesture would see you observe a unilateral ceasefire in the designated area, of say four hours, pending the mutual ceasefire’s entry into force.”

Here, Annan was reminded that the ceasefire provision in his six-point plan was contingent on the cessation of the funding of, and smuggling of arms to, the opposition.

The UN envoy listened carefully for a few seconds until he was asked bluntly: “What do you think of U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s talks two days ago about the prospects of a ‘catastrophic assault’ on government forces by the armed groups? Is that consistent with your (troubleshooting) mission?”

Annan paused for a few seconds before replying, “No, of course not. This is dangerous talk. But let’s try, let’s try applying this (phased ceasefire) approach step by step.”

As regards a timetable for this process, both sides exchanged various proposals and views before settling on a three-month timeline to see it through, beginning with the execution of the first step. Concomitantly, the two sides would issue a joint progress report every fortnight.

Annan then moved on to the matter of political dialogue between the government and the opposition in a tone vacillating between realism and skepticism.

The UN envoy asked Assad, “Should we make progress on the security front, would you be able to name your representative for the negotiations with the opposition – a sort of liaison officer to see through the second chapter of the UN mission?”

Dr. Ali Haidar

Assad smiled and replied instantaneously: “Before you even asked, and since formation of the current government, we decided on the person to be in charge of this matter. He is our minister of state for national reconciliation affairs, Dr. Ali Haidar.”

When Annan wanted to know more about Dr. Haidar, Assad explained the reasons for his selection, saying: “One, because he is not from the loyalist camp. Two, he is effectively from the opposition and heads a credible opposition party. Three, he was injured during the events and his son was killed by armed rebels. But he was able to overcome all this and accept the job of working for a genuine national reconciliation.”

Annan remarked, “But we would have preferred the nomination of someone closer to you -- someone who would be in direct contact with you to bring the dialogue process to completion.”

Assad smiled again, telling Annan: “Dr. Haidar and I shared adjoining desks throughout my university years specializing in ophthalmology. Do you want someone closer than that? Anyway, I think your greater difficulty will be on the other side, not on ours. Will you be able to get a name to represent the opposition?”

Annan couldn’t help chuckling before saying, “I am certainly aware of the difficulty. I saw them (the opposition groups) at their last conference in Cairo.”

The official meeting ended there. But while preparing to take leave, Annan asked his host, “How long you think can this crisis last?”

Assad: “So long as (…) funds them” -- (a possible reference to Qatar).

Annan was not taken aback by Assad’s answer but wondered: “You think they’re doing all the funding?”

Assad: “They’re doing a lot of things in the region. They believe they can lead the Arab world now and in future.”

Annan quipped, “But it seems they lack the number of citizens to do that.”

No quick fix for Syria: It’s game on!

Putin and Obama in Los Cabos

There is no quick fix for Syria. It’s game on!

I suppose that’s what Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Barak Obama agreed at their meeting yesterday on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Speaking after the two-hour meeting, Obama said he and Putin had pledged to work with "other international actors, including the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and all interested parties" to try to find a solution to the 15-month-old Syria crisis.

Putin said the two countries had found "many common points" on Syria.

“We agree to cooperate bilaterally and multilaterally to solve regional conflicts,” the leaders said in a joint statement, adding: “In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call for an immediate cessation of all violence and express full support for the efforts of UN/League of Arab States Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan, including moving forward on political transition to a democratic, pluralistic political system that would be implemented by the Syrians themselves in the framework of Syria’s sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity. We are united in the belief that the Syrian people should have the opportunity to independently and democratically choose their own future.”

But despite the optimistic rhetoric at the meeting, the Obama administration is unlikely to change its stand on many issues, including Syria. This is what a former member of the Reagan Administration, Paul Craig Roberts, told Russian 24/7 English-language news channel RT.

“I am convinced Putin does not want a conflict with Washington. He wants to resolve the issue of the missile bases that are surrounding Russia. He does not want conflict. And Obama does not want any conflict either. But he is just a member of the government that wants regime change in Syria. And Obama is not exactly in position to be able to stop that.”

“Obama will do what he can to get along with Putin, but still has to represent the agenda of regime change,” Roberts added. “And the situation I think is unresolved.”

BBC News in turn quotes correspondents as saying there were no smiles between Obama and Putin during the news conference, and their interactions seemed stiff and strained.

Bouthaina Shaaban, a political adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said after talks in Moscow this week with Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov that Damascus “welcomes the (Moscow) idea” of convening an international conference on Syria.

Later today, UN Security Council members will be briefed in consultations by the head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), Maj.-Gen. Robert Mood. The briefing has taken on further significance following Mood’s decision last Saturday to suspend UNSMIS activities until further notice.

It is also likely the Council’s next briefing from Annan himself may be moved forward from its currently scheduled date of June 26 to later this week.

The long and short of all this is that the give and take over the Annan mission, the UN monitors’ task and Russia’s proposed Syria conference will resume ad infinitum.

And the carnage will not stop anytime soon.

Editorially, leading Lebanese political analyst Nicolas Nassif, writing this morning for the staunchly pro-Assad Beirut daily al-Akhbar, believes the Syria stalemate will “probably persist another few months.”

In his think piece -- titled “Syria: The regime in daytime and the rebels at night?” – Nassif lists a series of observations regarding Russia’s stand on the Syria crisis. He says unnamed Lebanese officials formed the impressions on the sidelines of their just-concluded “mission” in Moscow.

Nassif itemizes five of their specific observations as follows:

1.     Moscow “behaves as though there is no Syria crisis. It carries on fulfilling military contracts signed with the Syrian government. It explicitly ignores Western sanctions against the regime, saying it doesn’t bother about them and they are irrelevant. It reiterates its determination to fulfill all contracts signed between the two countries.”

2.   Moscow does not conceal its “full coordination with Damascus on events and developments facing the regime, particularly as concerns its opponents who are being funded and armed unconditionally.” Russian officials do not deny being aware of escalating violence against the regime, which says it is in a position of legitimate self-defense. Contrary to previous impressions, “Russia is neither surprised nor embarrassed by the growing violence.” In step with Damascus, it lays the blame at the door of the opposition’s Western and Arab backers.

3.     Moscow reads the election of Syrian Kurdish activist Abdulbaset Sieda head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) as “an attempt to introduce the Kurdish factor into the equation and broaden the scope of confrontation with the regime religiously, socially and ideologically. Another aim of Sieda’s election is to turn the Kurds against the Syrian president who naturalized them and gave them their civil rights at the onset of the crisis.”

4.  Inasmuch as they are adamant about standing by Assad’s regime, and notwithstanding their call for an international conference on Syria, the Russians acknowledge that one reason for their own opposition’s demonstrations against Putin is his endorsement of Assad. But having been duped in Iraq, Libya and Yemen, the Russian officials told their Lebanese opposite numbers they won’t let this happen with Syria, whether inside or outside the UN Security Council.

5.     Moscow’s “confidence in the survival of the regime of Assad and his inner circle parallel its blind faith in the Syrian army’s unity and cohesion. Russians consider the Syrian army an immutable bedrock that will “protect the regime, prevent its collapse and preclude the president’s forcible ouster…”

On the ground in Syria, Nassif registers pluses and minuses for the regime and its opponents over the past three months.

Among them:

• The army has “lost control of cardinal sections of the rural areas of some major cities such as Damascus, Aleppo and Idlib… The chaos there was condensed in a sentence: ‘The regime in daytime and the rebels at night.’”

• The number of mass protests against the regime has dwindled considerably.

• Save for Homs, “which has been marginalized, destroyed and depopulated,” the regime maintains full control of the big cities, specially the capital Damascus.

Syria trips up "blue berets" after "yellow vests"

Kofi Annan and Norway's Maj. Gen. Robert Mood

The Norwegian Army’s former Chief of Staff Major-General Robert Mood, 54, who was nominated to head the observers mandated by the UN Security Council to oversee implementation of a full cessation of armed violence by all parties in Syria has walked away and returned to Oslo.

Russia’s permanent UN representative tells Inner City Press that Mood is unprofessional for leaving Damascus, but ”there are other people.”

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, says new attacks by Syrian regime forces and their intensified bombardment of Homs "call into question the wisdom and viability" of sending a full UN ceasefire observer mission to Syria.

The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, says chances of Kofi Annan’s six-point plan for solving the Syria crisis "are no higher than three percent."

Mood took a team of 10 to Syria on April 5 and returned to Geneva on April 10 to brief Annan. He told NTB while in Geneva, “My main assignment has been negotiations with the (Syrian) government and military, where I discussed how we can get an observer force in place…

“We agree in principle that the army will withdraw, but the government is demanding clear commitments from the opposition. I think that both sides are plagued by a very high degree of mutual suspicion, and that it’s terribly difficult for them to cross that abyss.”

The Daily Star, Lebanon’s English-language daily, believes Gen. Mood took himself off from the UN observer mission to avoid becoming a “false witness” to the ongoing tragedy in Syria.

Also today, Lebanese political analyst Rajeh el-Khoury, who writes for the Beirut daily an-Nahar, suggests Mood opted out of “Mission Impossible” for not wanting to be “a witness who would see nothing untoward.”

And in his daily column for Saudi Arabia’s Asharq Alawsat, Egyptian political analyst and the Middle East’s pioneer talk show host Imad Adeeb is at a loss to explain how the Arab League, the UN secretary-general, the UN Security Council and Kofi Anan can believe -- “even for a split second” – that Damascus would cease armed violence against civilians.

The Daily Star

In the opinion of The Daily Star editorial writer:

“With the first of the UN observers having arrived to Syria, and regime violence showing no sign of abating, it is becoming apparent that the Security Council mission has little to no purpose.

Since the ‘ceasefire,’ backed by the United Nations, came into effect Thursday, activists say around 55 people, mostly civilians, have been killed across the country, with Monday bringing news of continued shelling in several cities.

Over the last 13 months there have been a multitude of appeals and recommendations to President Bashar al-Assad, from a variety of international and regional bodies and institutions, all of them ignored and manipulated as a method of biding time and extending the bloodshed.

It appears that this UN mission, sold as an integral part of Kofi Annan’s six-point plan, is more of the same, and perhaps even more dangerous: masking as it does the real extent of the violence and killings, with the observers on a guided tour of the country’s calm spots, having been warned that they bear responsibility for their own safety should they stray from the sightseeing tour.

The mystery of the missing mission chief – Norwegian Gen. Robert Mood, who arrived in Damascus two weeks ago, only to return to Oslo with an apparent vow of silence, and who has now been replaced by Moroccan Col. Ahmed Himmiche – should be cause for concern. While the UN has insisted there is no problem, it seems evident that Mood took umbrage with the extent of the mission’s reach in Syria, and its ability to have a real impact on the outcome of the ceasefire.

Again, as with the failed Arab League observer mission in January, the Syrian authorities are using this as an opportunity to bide their time, demanding details on the observers’ backgrounds and home countries.

And with their movement so restricted, the observers are merely false witnesses to the ongoing tragedy in Syria. Denied access to the worst hit cities and towns, or to the victims of government abuses, they will observe but a portion of the reality, and a warped one at that.

In order for the United Nations, and the wider international community, to preserve a shred of credibility and respectability, the observers would follow Mood’s route and abandon the mission and refuse to provide the regime with any more legitimacy. Otherwise they will share responsibility in the continued killings of innocent people.

By acting as the message-carriers for the Syrian regime, the UN observers are contributing to the farce of the entire resolution, passed at the weekend, which only seems to be covering up the crimes of the regime, and allowing government agents time to breathe.

It is crucial now for Mood to speak up, and to reveal exactly why he felt he could no longer head such a mission. This might allow for a greater understanding of the mission’s work, and its failings.”

Rajeh el-Khoury

In an-Nahar, Khoury says Mood quit probably to evade becoming a Norwegian duplicate of Mustafa al-Dabi, the controversial Sudanese general who headed last year’s failed Syria observer mission. He didn’t want the UN’s “blue berets” to face the same breakdown as the “yellow-vested” Arab League observers.

“Seeing how Syria ‘reads’ the observer mission mandate, Mood opted out. He doubtless realized he was on ‘Mission Impossible’ and that conditions set by the regime would turn him into ‘the witness who would see nothing untoward.’”

Damascus, says Khoury, wants the UN observers to borrow its eyes instead of using their own to scrutinize the situation on the ground. It also wants to vet the monitors and their nationalities, “hoping they all turn out to be Russian, Iranian and Chinese.” Consequently, “the blue berets are set to crash where the yellow vests crashed before.”

Imad Adeeb

After wondering how Ban Ki-moon, Annan and the Security Council could believe – albeit for a moment – that Damascus would stop its crackdown unconditionally and begin “a political honeymoon” with the opposition, Adeeb writes:

“We are watching a game to buy time. It is the game played by Saddam Hussein in Iraq apropos the search for weapons of mass destruction. It is the game played by Muammar Gaddafi concerning the cessation of the civil war in Libya. It is also the game being played – artfully—by Iran against the International Atomic Energy Agency and the West over its nuclear program…

“Sine the U.S. presidential elections are looming and France, Russia, China and the United Kingdom are busy with past, present or future ballots or with such issues as unemployment, energy prices, European debt and the value of the dollar,” the bloodbath in Syria will prolong.

“This has no precedent in post-World War II history,” Adeeb notes “except for Mobutu’s killings in Zaire and the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.”