No plan to end Syria violence, envoy says

Bleak outlook shows how fruitless diplomacy can be.

DAMASCUS, Syria — The new international envoy tasked with ending Syria’s civil war summed up his first foray to Damascus on Saturday with a startling and frank admission that he still has no plan for stopping the bloodshed, which he warned could threaten world peace.

The bleak outlook offered by veteran diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi after three days of meetings with Syrian officials and the opposition underlines just how fruitless diplomatic efforts have been in bringing an end to the seemingly intractable and deadly 18-month-old conflict.

“I repeat ... I have no plan,” Brahimi told reporters in Damascus after meeting with Syria’s embattled president, Bashar Assad, in their first talks since the Algerian diplomat took up the job earlier this month that he himself has called “nearly impossible.”

“We, however, will set the plan that we will follow after listening to all internal, regional and international parties, hoping that such a plan will manage to open channels toward ending the crisis,” he said.

Activist groups said more than 50 people were killed across the country Saturday in violence centered in the country’s largest city, Aleppo, and the outskirts of the capital, Damascus.

Brahimi faces a monumental task in trying to break through the deadly cycle of violence that activists say has killed at least 23,000 people since the uprising to topple Assad began in March 2011. Brahimi, who also served as a U.N. envoy in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan who left the job in frustration in August after his efforts failed to resolve Syria’s conflict.

Annan’s six-point peace plan, which included a cease-fire, never gained traction on the ground, and was largely ignored by the government and the rebels before the plan ultimately collapsed.

Mindful of the challenges on the ground, Brahimi said the crisis in Syria is “very serious and dangerous,” and the gap between the political parties “very wide.”

The veteran Algerian diplomat’s visit to Syria that began Thursday has involved meetings with both officials and opposition leaders. He says the goal is to help him plan his initiative to end the crisis.

Assad reiterated his country’s “full commitment” to cooperate with any efforts to end the crisis in Syria as long as those efforts are “neutral and independent,” according to the state-run news agency SANA. The Syrian regime has made several such pledges in the past, only to routinely violate those commitments.

Assad also said any efforts would need to focus on pressuring countries that “finance and train terrorists and smuggle weapons into Syria to halt such acts.”

Syrian authorities blame the uprising on a foreign conspiracy and accuse Gulf countries Saudi Arabia and Qatar, along with th e U.S, other Western countries, and Turkey, of offering funding and training to the rebels, whom they describe as “terrorists.”

Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the rebels’ main foreign backers offering aid, and Turkey serves as headquarters for the leaders of the ragtag Free Syrian Army rebel group and hosts many of the Syrian Na- tional Council opposition group’s meetings.

The Syrian president also said his government was “serious” in its call for a dialogue among all Syrians — a call that has been repeatedly rejected by the opposition which is adamant that any dialogue should be restricted to talks on Assad stepping down.

Brahimi acknowledged the difficulty of the mission and said he was not looking for any quick success.