‘Assad’s plan one-sided’

BEIRUT: President Bashar al-Assad’s plan for Syria is “perhaps even more sectarian, more one-sided” than previous such initiatives by the embattled regime, international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi told the BBC on Wednesday.

The UN and Arab League envoy was giving his first public reaction to a three-step plan to end the crisis, announced in a rare speech on Sunday by Assad.

“What has been said this time is not really different and it is perhaps even more sectarian, more one-sided,” Brahimi said.

“What you need is reaching out and recognising that there is a problem, a very, very serious problems between Syrians, and that Syrians have got to talk to one another to solve it,” he said.

Assad’s plan for a “political solution” in Syria was swiftly rejected by the opposition and snubbed by Western nations as being detached from reality and essentially empty.

Brahimi last visited Damascus in December, and met both Assad and opposition groups tolerated by the regime.

“I told (Assad) to be certain that an initiative should be different from what has been done in the past and has not worked,” said Brahimi.

“I’m afraid that what has come out is very much a repeat of previous initiatives that obviously did not work.”

Referring to the so-called Arab Spring that has swept the region since late 2010, Brahimi said: “Now people want to have a say in how they are governed. They want to take hold of their own future.”

He added: “In Syria in particular, what people are saying is that one family ruling for 40 years is a little bit too long. So the change has to be real.

“I think President Assad could take the lead in responding to the aspirations of his people, rather than resisting it.”

Meanwhile, Jihadist fighters seized on Wednesday parts of a large military airport in north-western Syria after a weeks-long siege, said a monitoring group.

“Troops clashed with Al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham fighters inside the Taftanaz military airport, after rebels broke in and seized large swathes of its grounds,” said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The jihadists destroyed several helicopter gunships during their assault, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of doctors, lawyers and activists for its reporting.

Army tanks pounded the airport grounds and several nearby villages in a bid to root out the rebels, said the watchdog.

In a related development, forty-eight Iranians held hostage by Syrian rebels for five months arrived in a Damascus hotel on Wednesday after being freed in a prisoner swap for more than 2,000 regime prisoners. The Iranians, described by Tehran as “pilgrims” by Tehran and by the rebels as captured Revolutionary Guards members supporting Syrian forces, looked visibly exhausted, with some weeping, an AFP correspondent reported. They were embraced by waiting Iranian diplomats and given white lilies. The prisoner exchange on Wednesday was the biggest to occur in Syria’s 21-month old conflict. Several sources, including a rebel spokesman and Iranian officials, said it was arranged through mediation by Turkey and Qatar.

Posted in: international