Role for Iran seen in Syria peace effort
In Tehran, special envoy Kofi Annan won’t publicly reveal details of his talks with Bashar Assad.
TEHRAN — Special envoy Kofi Annan said Tuesday that Iran “can play a positive role” in resolving the crisis in Syria but declined to provide details on an apparently new “approach” suggested by Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“I believe ... that Iran has a role to play,” Annan said, repeating his previous stance on the matter. “I don’t speak for other countries.”
The United States has charged that Iran, Assad’s close ally, has played a “destructive”
Assad ‘made a suggestion of building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence.’
— Kofi Annan,
special envoy on Syria
role in helping keep the Syrian president in power amid a violent uprising now in its 16th month. On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated the U.S. insistence that Assad must go and added: “I don’t think anybody with a straight face could argue that Iran has had a positive impact on developments in Syria.”
Annan, joint envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, spoke Tuesday at a news conference in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi. The former U.N. secretarygeneral later flew to neighboring Iraq for talks with Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.
Annan declined to provide details on what kind of approach for ending the violence he discussed with Assad the day before in Damascus, the Syrian capital. But the initiative seems to have come from Assad, a point that may make it a nonstarter with the opposition, which has said Assad must go before meaningful talks can begin for peace and a political transition.
Assad “made a suggestion of building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence, to try and contain the violence in those districts and, step by step, build up and end the violence across the country,” Annan said. “The details, of course, are to be worked out, and the opposition — we’ll also have to discuss this with them.”
Insurgent-linked violence has spread over much of Syria, but several areas are hot spots, including several suburbs of Damascus, the central provinces of Homs and Hama, the eastern province of Dair Alzour and northern Idlib province, much of which is under de facto rebel control.
The U.N. envoy is in the midst of his latest diplomatic tour meant to help salvage his faltering six-point peace plan, widely violated by both sides in the Syrian conflict since it was negotiated three months ago. Among other things, the plan calls for a cease-fire, a withdrawal of troops and armor from populated areas, and a start toward dialogue in the deeply divided nation.
Meanwhile, the bestknown Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Council, announced on its Facebook page that a delegation headed by its top officer, Abdulbaset Sieda, will travel to Moscow on Wednesday for talks at the invitation of the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The council said it remained committed to its main principles, including bringing down the Syrian regime before starting to prepare for a transition. But Russia and another Assad ally, China, have rejected any plan that as a precondition calls on Assad to resign.
Annan’s visit to Tehran came amid further signs of the Syrian conflict spilling into Lebanon. Shelling from Syria once again hit the northern border township of Wadi Khaled, the second deadly attack in recent days, Lebanese news reports said Tuesday. It was unclear whether any casualties directly resulted.