Can a new UN plan save Syria? Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (right) shakes hands with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left). Illustrative. Photo Courtesy of UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe.
The latest United Nations envoy covering the Syrian civil war has a new initiative in mind to try to resolve the brutal conflict that has killed at least 250,000 people according to the UN News Centre. But one thing hasn’t changed—the US doesn’t want Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to be part of a new Syrian leadership.
The reiteration of American concerns about Assad retaining power, after his vicious crackdown on dissent kickstarted the civil war, come after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon presented to the UN Security Council the plans formed by UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura for working groups in Syria to move toward a political solution to the war.
The working groups would be designed aim for a “Syrian-owned framework document” that would implement the 2012 plan for resolving the crisis, said the UN News Centre report. The 2012 Geneva Communique has a number of steps in it to form a political conclusion to the war, including a new transitional government.
Developing that governing body, which is supposed to include members of the current regime and the opposition, has been the “major stumbling block in the political process,” acknowledged Ban to the Security Council, citing information gathered by the UN Special Envoy.
The US, meanwhile, continues to have no trouble in arguing who shouldn’t be leading a new Syria, and why not.
“What we’ve been very clear about is we need a political process and a political resolution in Syria, and one that certainly doesn’t include Assad. And so to that end, that’s our ultimate goal,” US spokesman Mark Toner said last week in comments released by the State Department.
Toner had a list of reasons on why Assad had to go.
Said Toner, “He’s killed countless innocents, brought tremendous violence, created, frankly, the conditions that we find in Syria today—that is, parts of it are lawless, controlled by ISIL [ISIS]… Assad is fully culpable in creating the situation that exists in Syria today. And for that reason, he can’t be part of any kind of political solution.”
(By Joshua Spurlock, www.themideastupdate.com, August 2, 2015)