MOSCOW, January 12 (RIA Novosti) - International Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said after talks with Russian and US diplomats on Friday that a political solution to the Syrian conflict is unlikely to emerge in the near future.
No practical deals were announced after the five-hour meeting of the UN-Arab League envoy with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns at the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva.
“If you are asking me whether a solution is around the corner, I am not sure that is the case,” Brahimi said in a video released by the UN News Centre after the talks.
“What I am certain of is … that it is the wider international community, especially members of the Security Council, that can really create the opening that is necessary to start effectively solving the problem,” he went on. “In our view, there is no military solution for this conflict.”
With the conflict approaching its two-year mark, and the UN recently saying that total deaths may have surpassed 60,000, all international efforts to end the fighting have failed thus far, with Russia and China blocking several Western-backed UN Security Council resolutions.
“I am absolutely certain that the Russians are as preoccupied as I am, as preoccupied as the Americans are, by the bad situation that exists in Syria and its continuing deterioration, and I am absolutely certain that they would like to contribute to its solution,” Brahimi said.
He added that Bogdanov and Burns agreed on the necessity to reach a political solution based on the so-called Geneva communiqué of June 30, 2012, proposing, among other things, a transitional Syrian government that would comprise both the Syrian authorities and opposition forces.
The day before the talks, the Syrian government accused Brahimi of “overstepping” his mandate and of having “a flagrant bias for those parties known to be conspiring against Syria and its people,” according to a report in the country’s state-run media.
Syria has been engulfed in a bloody civil war between various opposition forces and government troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad since March 2011.
