Envoy Urges Regional Figures to Support Iran’s Proposed Plan for Syria

Iranian Ambassador to Beirut Qazanfar Roknabadi called on political and religious figures in the region to support Tehran’s 6-point plan to settle the crisis in Syria.

In a meeting with the new Antakya Orthodox Patriarch, Youhanna Yazigi, in Beirut on Thursday, Roknabadi called for the support of the regional political and religious figures for Iran’s 6-point peace plan for the settlement of the Syrian crisis and form a national reconciliation government.

Patriarch Yazigi, for his part, stressed the need to stop killing and violence in Syria and said that national reconciliation is the only solution to the crisis in Syria.

He said regional nations, especially the Syrians, whether Christian or Muslim, should think of dialogue as the only way out of the crisis and resort to wise manners to prevent violence and bloodshed.

Iran’s proposed plan calls for an immediate end to violence and a start of the national dialogue. The third step is to create a reconciliation government and provide humanitarian aid to the people of Syria. The next step is the release of prisoners, who have not committed a crime against Syrians. And the final point is to allow media’s full access to Syria.

Tehran has recently doubled its efforts to settle the problems in Syria which has been experiencing unrests since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian security forces and border guards.

On November 18, Iran hosted the Syrian National Dialogue Conference, with the motto “No to Violence, Yes to Democracy”.

Over 200 Syrian religious and political figures, leaders of tribes and parties as well as representatives and leaders of the opposition groups took part in the two-day meeting in Tehran.

A number of Syrian parliament members as well as senior political figures from Sudan, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Brazil and Zimbabwe also took part in the meeting.

This was the first time that both Syrian opposition figures and the minister of national reconciliation Ali Haidar, as the representative of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, discussed ways of finding a solution to the Syrian crisis.

The Islamic Republic of Iran is in favor of negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups to create stability in the Middle Eastern country.