Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
, the United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
envoy to Syria has said in the first such acknowledgement by the UN.
"President Assad is part of the solution," Staffan de Mistura told a joint presser with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in Vienna on Feb. 13.
"I will continue to have very important discussions with him," de Mistura added, noting: "The only solution is a political solution." This was the first time a UN envoy on Syria has explicitly named Assad as part of a peaceful solution after nearly four years of fighting between government forces and rebels seeking his overthrow.
De Mistura's remarks drew condemnation from the key opposition National Coalition as well as from activists on the ground in Syria.
"I think De Mistura is fooling himself if he thinks that Assad is part of the solution," coalition member Samir Nashar told AFP by telephone from Istanbul. "Assad is the problem, not part of the solution."
Najib Ghadbian, the National Coalition's UN envoy, described the "brutality" of Assad's regime as the root cause of the conflict. He also warned the U.S.-led alliance fighting the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) -- which has seized swathes of territory in both Syria and Iraq -- that its efforts would fail unless world powers get serious about a peace plan for Syria.