BEIRUT — International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in the Syrian
capital Damascus on Friday to try to broker a brief cease-fire in the
war between President Bashar al-Assad and rebels, a U.N. spokesman said.
Brahimi, envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, has been
criss-crossing the region with the aim of convincing Assad's main
backers and his foes to support a truce during the Islamic festival of
Eid al-Adha next week.
The U.N. spokesman in Damascus, Khaled al-Masri, told Reuters that
Brahimi would meet Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem on Saturday
morning. He did not say whether the envoy would meet Assad himself.
Despite positive words from the different backers of the warring
factions, the task of securing even a temporary ceasefire appears
daunting in an intensifying conflict in which more than 30,000 people
have been killed.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Friday called for all
sides to observe the three- or four-day cease-fire, a day after saying
that the Arab League and Iran, Assad's main backer in the region,
supported the proposal.
"It is important that the Syrian regime, which bombards its own
people with fighter planes and helicopters, halts these attacks
immediately and unconditionally," Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara.
A previous cease-fire in April collapsed after just a few days, with
each side blaming the other. Mediator Kofi Annan resigned his post in
frustration a few months later. Next week's truce would be self-imposed,
with no monitoring.
Lebanese political scientist Hilal Khashan said that Turkey, which
supports the uprising, and Iran were probably promoting the cease-fire
because "they need to seem like they are doing something."
"I don't think it will work. Neither side trusts the other, and the
opposition fears the regime will use the ceasefire to bolster its
positions in Aleppo and Idlib," he told Reuters in Beirut.
A rebel group calling itself the Joint Command for Military and
Revolution Councils in Syria said in a video statement that it was
willing to respect the cease-fire on condition that the Assad government
released detainees, particularly women, and lifted the siege of the
central city of Homs.
It also called for a halt in airstrikes and for access to
humanitarian aid — something Assad has in practice denied to several
international organizations. It also said the army must not take
advantage of the truce to fortify its positions.
The war pitting Assad's troops against a loosely-organized rebel
force trying to end his 12 years in power has intensified in recent
months.
On Thursday, 240 people were killed across the country in fighting
and bombardments, from the capital, Damascus, to the country's
commercial centre, Aleppo.
© 2012 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.
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