The West doesn’t rule out Bashar al-Assad’s participation in talks anymore

By Vestnik Kavkaza

Recently, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made a statement on the fourth anniversary of the start of the conflict in Syria, warning that the country is on the verge of disintegration. He called on the Security Council to take resolute steps to stop the bloodshed. Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy for the Syrian crisis, is discussing ways out of the conflict with Damascus and the Syrian opposition. He believes that the Syrian conflict can be stopped only by means of negotiations, even if the participation of President al-Assad is needed. Yesterday, his position was supported by the Foreign Minister of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Moscow has been calling for this line since the beginning of the Syrian crisis. Professor of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Sergei Ivanov, thinks that “there is no alternative to the existing political regime. The results of the last four years have been tragic for Syria: tens of thousands of dead and wounded, more than two million refugees, many cities destroyed, the country is experiencing a severe economic and humanitarian catastrophe. The Syrian crisis has seriously destabilized the situation in the Middle East, has led to an unprecedented wave of terrorism and extremism, and helped plunge the region into chaos.”

“We sympathize and empathize with what happened in Syria, not hiding the mistakes, pointing out the mistakes that were made by the government of Bashar al-Assad. There were chances, of course, I, as an Arabist, can say that there were chances to stop all these opposition sentiments in society at an early stage. Remember when the events in Daraa began, student unrest, which asked to simply raise the scholarships? They did not listen, used inappropriate force. People suffered. Then the unions went to protest. And the wave of violence rolled, the spiral of violence.”

Russia is trying to gather the current Syrian government and the moderate opposition for talks: “Now the objections will begin that there is no opposition, that it is motley, that it does not represent anyone there in Syria. Nevertheless, it’s holding, holding an account, I understand, injections from the West and the Sunni monarchies. Nevertheless, the opposition has a place to be and we need to negotiate with it. Therefore, we received the Syrian opposition representatives in Moscow… The main demand of the opposition, in any colors, shades, or degree of radicalism, is that the Assad regime must go. In other words, so that the Alawites transfer power in the country. To whom? This question is not discussed. It is necessary to have some positive constructive program, a creative program of reformation of, as they say now, the social life, the political life, if it has the consent of the Syrian people. The alternative to the current regime is an abyss of violence, turning Syria into Libya,” Ivanov says.