Damascus will respond to any initiative that could solve Syria’s 21-month conflict through talks, its premier said on Monday, after peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi announced he had a plan to end the bloodshed.
Syrian Prime Minister told the Syrian (Parliament) the government is working to find solution and take steps to provide citizens’ needs and carry out essential plans and projects.
Syrian security forces arrested on Sunday Majdoline Hasan, a female lawyer who has been active in defending political prisoners and took part in the Syrian revolution since the first days in March 2011.
A Russian warship carrying a marines unit has left its Black Sea port for Syria amid preparations for a possible evacuation of nationals living and working in the strife-torn country, news reports said Sunday.
“A solution is still possible but is getting more complicated every day,” he added. “We have a proposal and I believe this proposal is adopted by the international community,” Lakhdar Brahimi said at a news conference.
Both Britain and Washington have denied knowing Makdissi’s whereabouts, whilst rumors about Makdissi’s fate abound in Lebanon. As for the al-Assad regime, it has remained silent, insisting that Makdissi is on “administrative leave”. So what is the fate of Jihad Makdissi? Asharq Al-Awsat has obtained important details regarding Makdissi’s movements over his final days and weeks in Syria prior to his disappearance.
The Syrian regime has pre-empted the arrival of the UN envoy to Damascus via Lebanon Mr. Lakhdar Librahimi with terrible massacres covered most of the nation and included more than / 310 / geographical points and locations with aerial bombardment using (Russian Mig fighters), since Mr. Librahimi could not be able to land in Damascus International Airport on Sunday 23/12/2007.
This recent massacre is yet another living example which reflects the regime’s real intention to suppress the will of the Syrian people. This shameless act refutes the claims recently put in the media suggesting that Assad’s regime is genuinely open for talks leading to a political solution. These claims are merely a mischievous attempt to allow Assad’s regime more time to suppress the revolution.
Al-Hayat Newspaper learned that Mikdad had traveled to Moscow to convey Syria’s ‘conservations on a number of the points in Librahimi’s plan.” Moscow “prefers to wait until it hears the details of Librahimi plan from him” in personm. But SANA reports that the Russian FM reiterated Russia’s support to a peaceful solution in Syria and renewed Russia’s known position on Geneva statement, affirming that there is no change in the Russian stance on Syria. AP focuses on Librahimi’s call for the formation of a transitional government with “full executive powers” to run the country until new elections can be held.
An opposition Alawite religious cleric who recently fled to the Turkish town of Antakya revealed that “the Alawite community is living in a state of great fear, after we have become aware that the collapse of the al-Assad regime is imminent, which will place us at the mercy of fierce reprisals from the Sunni majority.”
n Syrian modern history itself we have a dangerous precedent of this, when the Alawi right to eliminate longstanding oppression paved the way for a military coup that engendered a grim tyrannical regime, which is now fighting its last and most devastating battle. Furthermore, the Lebanese know well how the Shiite right to defend the villages of the south became a leverage for Hezbollah, which has now become one of the biggest obstacles to the establishment of the Lebanese state.
There is nothing so dangerous as a former superpower unaware of its own diminished role. What the Kremlin of Vladimir Putin today lacks in ideology, it more than makes up for in invidious posturing.
The Russian foreign ministry said Lakhdar Brahimi will hold talks in Moscow on Saturday following consultations with President Bashar Assad’s regime in Damascus, at his request.
Syria’s wounded interior minister cut short his treatment at a Beirut hospital Wednesday and returned home for fear of being arrested by Lebanese authorities
After losing three sons and two grandsons, 70-year-old Abdelhalim Haj Omar has no doubt about the fate he wants for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Assad appoints a new head of the Council of State, a high ranking special court, in a step that aims to give the impression that the state agencies are working properly and that President Assad is in full control of the situation.
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces reminds the international community of its moral and humanitarian obligations, as this new massacre came just before the visit of the international envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi to Damascus, and amidst the talk about new initiatives. The massacre also came after the world’s powers knew of the regime’s use of Scud missiles and their failure to react towards such serious violations by taking any serious actions necessitated by international laws and humanitarian obligations.
The Building the Syrian State Current (BSSC) calls on all the local forces and international actors to do what they can to prevent an imminent humanitarian catastrophe.
Rebels began to push into a strategic town in Syria’s central Hama province on Thursday and laid siege to at least one town dominated by President Bashar al-Assad’s minority sect, riskinginflaming already raw sectarian tensions as the 21-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule
