Testy exchanges set tone at Syrian talks

At a news conference Wednesday in Montreux, Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry said it was unthinkable that Syrian President Bashar Assad would have a role in a transitional government.
At a news conference Wednesday in Montreux, Switzerland, Secretary of State John Kerry said it was unthinkable that Syrian President Bashar Assad would have a role in a transitional government.

MONTREUX, Switzerland - Friction and acrimony broke out almost immediately Wednesday at the start of a long-delayed peace conference on Syria, casting doubt on the prospects for easing hostilities or even opening up emergency aid corridors to help besieged civilians.

The conference of delegates representing 30 countries in the lakeside Swiss city of Montreux, already troubled by last-minute diplomatic stumbles, was described by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as a test for the international community. But the meeting had barely begun when the atmosphere grew even more charged over divisions between the United States and Russia and especially among the Syrians themselves.

The Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, who led his country’s delegation, called Syrian insurgents evil and ignored appeals by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, to avoid invective and to yield the floor as a bell signaled he had exceeded the allotted time for his remarks.

“You live in New York; I live in Syria,” al-Moallem snapped after Ban asked that he conclude his speech, which lasted more than 30 minutes. “I have the right to give the Syrian version here in this forum. After three years of suffering, this is my right.”

photo

AP

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem talks with European Union foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton during a break Wednesday in peace talks in Montreux, Switzerland.

After al-Moallem finished, Ban lamented that his injunction that participants take a constructive approach to the crisis “had been broken.”

Despite the lack of progress, several Syrians expressed hope that the conference signaled the start of a process in which Syrians might eventually overcome their differences.

“It’s a historic moment,” said Ibrahim al-Hamidi, a veteran journalist for the Saudi-owned Al Hayat newspaper, originally from the northern Syrian city of Idlib. “After three years of military struggle, when the opposition tried very hard to destroy the regime, and the regime tried very hard to crush the opposition, this is the first time the two delegations sit down in one room under U.N. auspices.”

Another Syrian journalist, speaking on condition of anonymity to express an opinion, pointed to the fact that many in the government delegation likely had never come face to face with an avowed opposition activist.

“These people have never seen, let alone spoken to, anyone in the opposition,” he said.

“They’ve never seen Haytham Maleh,” he added, referring to a former political prisoner in his 80s who is a member of the opposition’s delegation in Switzerland. “So for them to sit across the table for him is historic. It is as if people from the Stalinist system suddenly sat down with the White Russians.”

On the eve of the conference, Kerry, Ban and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, engaged in a calculated display of comity, playing down the United States’ lobbying effort to persuade the United Nations to withdraw its invitation for Iran to attend the meeting.

“Do we all look happy?” Lavrov quipped as the three held hands for a Tuesday night photo opportunity.

But when the conference opened Wednesday, the sharp differences re-emerged. Kerry said it was unthinkable that President Bashar Assad of Syria could play a role in a transitional administration that would govern the country as part of a political settlement. The establishment of such a transitional body by “mutual consent” of the Assad government and the Syrian opposition is the major goal of the conference.

“The right to lead a country does not come from torture, nor barrel bombs, nor Scud missiles,” Kerry said. “And the only thing standing in its way is the stubborn clinging to power of one man, one family.”

The response from the Syrian government delegation was firm and blunt.

“There will be no transfer of power, and President Bashar Assad is staying,” Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoubi said.

Lavrov also challenged the U.S. insistence that Assad be excluded from a possible transitional administration, arguing that the conference had to “refrain from any attempt to predetermine the outcome of the process.” Lavrov also revived the Russian argument that Iran, Assad’s regional ally, should be present, challenging the U.S. position that Iran not be allowed to participate until it publicly endorses the mandate for the conference.

In Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran and other top officials expressed doubt that the peace conference would produce results. The official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted Rouhani as saying Wednesday that he was “not optimistic about the conference due to the existing circumstances.”

While the stark differences between the U.S. and Russian positions were outlined in civil tones, that diplomatic restraint was abandoned when al-Moallem took the floor and launched into a diatribe in which he accused Arab nations of financing terrorism and conspiring to destroy his country.

“They have used their petrodollars to buy weapons and to flood the international media with lies,” he said. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have expressed support for the opposition.

Al-Moallem also accused insurgents of conducting “sexual jihad” by brainwashing women into becoming sex slaves and engaging in incest. After Ban repeatedly urged him to be concise, the Syrian foreign minister said he would conclude soon, adding that “Syria always keeps its promises.”

But he continued with his denunciations of the opposition. “Your glorious revolution,” he said sarcastically, “did not leave one single evil deed on earth that it did not do.”

Ahmad Jarba, the president of the Western-backed Syrian opposition coalition, opened his speech with the story of Hajar al-Khatib, 11, who he said had been shot by government forces as she rode a bus to school in Rastan, near the central city of Homs, in May 2011, in the early days of the anti-Assad protests that morphed into a civil war.

“Ten thousand children have died because of the Syrian army,” he said.

Syrians “waited almost a year before they fought back,” he said, referring to the transformation of a largely peaceful protest movement to an armed insurgency. “Who, ladies and gentlemen, would accept to be violated in this manner? How long should they have waited?”

“We want to be sure we have a Syrian partner in this room,” Jarba said, alluding to the conference’s goal of establishing a transitional administration.

“Do we have such a partner?” Jarba added, noting that the opposition would never accept a role for Assad in a transitional administration.

Ban tried to put the best face on a difficult day and said the hardest work had yet to come.

“We did not expect instant breakthroughs. … No one underestimated the difficulties,” Ban said at the end of the day. “The Syrian people are looking desperately for relief from the nightmare in which they are trapped.”

With little common ground, the two sides were to meet separately today with a U.N. negotiator, Lakhdar Brahimi, who said he still did not know if they were ready to sit at the same table when talks begin in earnest Friday. But, Brahimi said, both sides had shown some willingness to bend on local cease-fires and delivery of humanitarian aid, and Lavrov said they also were working on possible terms for a prisoner exchange.

Outside the conference, Assad’s supporters waved the flags of the Syrian government and Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant organization that is helping him. “God, Bashar and nothing else!” they screamed.

An opposition activist, Rami Jarrah, approached them with a television camera. When he asked if Assad should be tried for war crimes, they began shouting, calling him a Zionist, shoving and pushing. Police intervened, but not before one Assad supporter grabbed a phone from Jarrah’s colleague and threw it to the ground, breaking it.

Inside, Zoubi, the Syrian information minister, said Syria was open to all journalists and would answer all questions. But when asked by a Syrian opposition journalist from Aleppo, Adnan Hadad, to comment on the deadly barrel bombs the military was accused of using on neighborhoods in his city, Zoubi turned hostile.

“This is the kind of question you ask if you support the terrorist groups,” he said. “Ask the Saudi foreign minister.”

Wednesday in Syria, government forces and rebels continued to fight and aid groups called on the international community to ensure that supplies reach millions of desperate civilians.

The statement by seven international aid and rights groups said the humanitarian crisis unleashed by the three year conflict “defies the basic norms of a civilized world.” Activists have said the conflict has killed more than 130,000 and forced millions more from their homes. An estimated 9 million people now need United Nations aid to survive.

As the conflict grinds on, government forces and to a lesser degree, rebels, have besieged areas under the control of their opponents to prevent food, medicine and other necessities from entering.

One of the worst-hit areas is the Yarmouk area on the southern fringe of Damascus, where activists said about 50 people have died of starvation and hunger-related illnesses since the government imposed a blockade on the district a year ago.

The need to open humanitarian corridors to relieve some of the suffering is one of the expected topics of the peace conference. The seven aid and rights organizations called on leaders attending the talks to push for “urgent humanitarian access to Syria.”

“Half of the country is now dependent on humanitarian aid and millions of people still cannot access life-saving assistance. In some areas disease and starvation are rife,” the groups said in a statement.

The signees included Amnesty International, Care USA, and World Vision.

Meanwhile, clashes broke out between government forces and rebels in the suburbs of Damascus, in the province of Daraa in the south, in Idlib and Aleppo in the north and in the central province of Homs, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group said.

Also Wednesday, the Syrian Justice Ministry dismissed a report alleging Syrian authorities tortured prisoners as “politicized and lacking objectiveness and professionalism.”

The ministry made the statement after three prominent international war-crimes experts said in a report that they had received a huge cache of photographs documenting the killing of some 11,000 detainees by Syrian authorities. The report - commissioned by Qatar, a backer of the opposition - could not be independently confirmed.

The Justice Ministry called the report a “gathering of images of unidentified people, some of whom have turned out to be foreigners.” The ministry said some of the people were militants killed during battles. It said others were killed by militant groups.

Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Gordon,Anne Barnard, Hwaida Saad, Hala Droubi and Alan Cowell of The New York Times; and by Alber Aji, Bassem Mroue, Diaa Hadid, Lori Hinnant, Matthew Lee, Zeina Karam, Desmond Butler and Cara Anna of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/23/2014

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