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| Putin and Obama in Los Cabos |
There is no quick fix for Syria. It’s game on!
I suppose that’s what Russian President Vladimir
Putin and his American counterpart Barak Obama agreed at their meeting yesterday
on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico.
Speaking after the
two-hour meeting, Obama said he and Putin had pledged to work with "other
international actors, including the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and all
interested parties" to try to find a solution to the 15-month-old Syria
crisis.
Putin said the two
countries had found "many common points" on Syria.
“We agree to cooperate
bilaterally and multilaterally to solve regional conflicts,” the leaders said
in a joint statement, adding: “In order to stop the bloodshed in Syria, we call
for an immediate cessation of all violence and express full support for the
efforts of UN/League of Arab States Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan, including
moving forward on political transition to a democratic, pluralistic political
system that would be implemented by the Syrians themselves in the framework of
Syria’s sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity. We are
united in the belief that the Syrian people should have the opportunity to
independently and democratically choose their own future.”
But despite the optimistic rhetoric at the
meeting, the Obama administration is unlikely to change its stand on many
issues, including Syria. This is what a former member of the Reagan Administration,
Paul Craig Roberts, told Russian 24/7 English-language
news channel RT.
“I am convinced
Putin does not want a conflict with Washington. He wants to resolve the issue
of the missile bases that are surrounding Russia. He does not want conflict.
And Obama does not want any conflict either. But he is just a member of the
government that wants regime change in Syria. And Obama is not exactly in
position to be able to stop that.”
“Obama will do
what he can to get along with Putin, but still has to represent the agenda of
regime change,”
Roberts added. “And the situation I
think is unresolved.”
BBC News in turn quotes
correspondents as saying there were no smiles between
Obama and Putin during the news conference, and their interactions seemed stiff
and strained.
Bouthaina Shaaban, a political adviser to Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, said after talks in Moscow this week with Deputy Foreign Minister
Mikhail Bogdanov that Damascus “welcomes the (Moscow) idea” of convening an
international conference on Syria.
Later today, UN Security Council members will be briefed
in consultations by the head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS),
Maj.-Gen. Robert Mood. The briefing has taken on further significance following
Mood’s decision last Saturday to suspend UNSMIS activities until further
notice.
It is also likely the
Council’s next briefing from Annan himself may be moved forward from its
currently scheduled date of June 26 to later this week.
The long and short of all
this is that the give and take over the Annan mission, the UN monitors’ task
and Russia’s
proposed Syria conference will resume ad infinitum.
And the carnage will not
stop anytime soon.
Editorially,
leading Lebanese political analyst Nicolas Nassif, writing this morning for the
staunchly pro-Assad Beirut daily al-Akhbar,
believes the Syria stalemate will “probably persist another few
months.”
In his think piece -- titled
“Syria: The regime in daytime and
the rebels at night?” – Nassif lists a series of observations regarding
Russia’s stand on the Syria crisis. He says unnamed Lebanese officials formed
the impressions on the sidelines of their just-concluded “mission” in Moscow.
Nassif itemizes five of
their specific observations as follows:
1. Moscow
“behaves as though there is no Syria crisis. It carries on fulfilling military
contracts signed with the Syrian government. It explicitly ignores Western sanctions
against the regime, saying it doesn’t bother about them and they are
irrelevant. It reiterates its determination to fulfill all contracts signed
between the two countries.”
2. Moscow
does not conceal its “full coordination with Damascus on events and
developments facing the regime, particularly as concerns its opponents who are
being funded and armed unconditionally.” Russian officials do not deny being
aware of escalating violence against the regime, which says it is in a position
of legitimate self-defense. Contrary to previous impressions, “Russia is
neither surprised nor embarrassed by the growing violence.” In step with
Damascus, it lays the blame at the door of the opposition’s Western and Arab
backers.
3.
Moscow reads
the election of Syrian Kurdish activist Abdulbaset Sieda
head of the Syrian National Council
(SNC) as “an attempt to introduce the Kurdish factor into the equation and
broaden the scope of confrontation with the regime religiously, socially and
ideologically. Another aim of Sieda’s election is to turn the Kurds against the
Syrian president who naturalized them and gave them their civil rights at the
onset of the crisis.”
4. Inasmuch
as they are adamant about standing by Assad’s regime, and notwithstanding their
call for an international conference on Syria, the Russians acknowledge that one
reason for their own opposition’s demonstrations against Putin is his endorsement
of Assad. But having been duped in Iraq, Libya and Yemen, the Russian officials
told their Lebanese opposite numbers they won’t let this happen with Syria,
whether inside or outside the UN Security Council.
5.
Moscow’s
“confidence in the survival of the regime of Assad and his inner circle
parallel its blind faith in the Syrian army’s unity and cohesion. Russians
consider the Syrian army an immutable bedrock that will “protect the regime,
prevent its collapse and preclude the president’s forcible ouster…”
On
the ground in Syria, Nassif registers pluses and minuses for the regime and its
opponents over the past three months.
Among
them:
- The army has “lost control of cardinal sections of the rural areas of some major cities such as Damascus, Aleppo and Idlib… The chaos there was condensed in a sentence: ‘The regime in daytime and the rebels at night.’”
- The number of mass protests against the regime has dwindled considerably.
- Save for Homs, “which has been marginalized, destroyed and depopulated,” the regime maintains full control of the big cities, specially the capital Damascus.
