UN and Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi began his Syria mission yesterday by meeting league officials and senior Egyptian leaders before heading to Damascus on his first official trip to the region.
Brahimi, replacing former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, who quit as envoy over divisions in the UN Security Council on the violence that has gripped Syria for nearly 18 months, arrived in Cairo late on Sunday from New York via Paris. Annan stepped down as international efforts to end the conflict faltered, and with no signs of the bloodshed ending, expectations are low that the former Algerian foreign minister will have any more success than his predecessor.
More than 27,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict erupted in March last year, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The UN puts the death toll at 20,000.
Brahimi, a veteran troubleshooter, has already said he was “scared” of the mission awaiting him in Syria and has described the bloodshed there as “staggering” and the destruction as “catastrophic.”
Brahimi spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters at Cairo airport the peace envoy was to meet Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Arabi and other officials yesterday.
Fawzi said the date of Brahimi’s visit to Syria is to be fixed once the final details of his program of meetings were set.
Brahimi’s mission begins with key UN Security Council members the US and Russia split on how to tackle the conflict and as fighting rages, with dozens of people dying in Syria every day.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Sunday that a new Security Council resolution on Syria would be pointless if it had “no teeth,” because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would ignore it.
Speaking in Russia, Clinton said she was willing to work with Moscow on a new resolution, but said that Washington would step up support to end al-Assad’s regime if the measure did not carry consequences.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after meeting Clinton that he hoped to seek Security Council approval for a peace plan agreed in June in Geneva that called for a ceasefire and political transition.
Clinton said if differences with Moscow persist, “then we will work with like-minded states to support a Syrian opposition to hasten the day when Assad falls.”
Washington has said it is providing non-lethal assistance to the opposition in Syria, whose regime has been a Moscow ally since the Cold War.
As part of his diplomatic push, Brahimi may try to enlist Iran. In Tehran, the Mehr news agency quoted an official as saying Brahimi was contemplating visiting the Islamic republic — Syria’s diehard ally — after Damascus.
Annan had also visited Tehran, but Washington has accused Iran of playing a “nefarious” role in Syria.
Arab leaders, meanwhile, have accused the Syrian regime of carrying out “crimes against humanity.”
Arab foreign ministers on Wednesday condemned “the pursuit of violence, killings and ugly crimes carried out by the Syrian authorities and their shabiha militias against Syrian civilians.”
Even as the latest diplomatic push to resolve the crisis unfolds, the fighting in Syria continues unabated, with scores of people reported killed.
The conflict has also triggered a massive exodus, with current Syrian refugee numbers in neighboring countries now 235,000, according to official UN figures.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
A Sherpa guide was found crawling to base camp on Mount Everest a week after he went missing and was reunited with his family, who had given up hope he would return. Dawa Sherpa was last seen on Friday last week descending the mountain, but he did not reach base camp even though his client did. The pair were among the last climbers on the mountain as the climbing season came to an end and the route was dismantled. Dawa was located by a cleaning crew on Thursday morning as he was crawling down the snowy slopes around the Khumbu Icefall, just above
RSS