Syria

Kofi Annan in Damascus for 3rd time since March


UN-Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan has arrived in Damascus to hold talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“It is confirmed that Mr. Annan will visit Damascus, within the framework of his mission, for discussions with the Syrian leadership on the subject of the six-point plan,” said Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi, a few hours before Annan’s arrival on Sunday.

Annan will meet President Assad on Monday for the third time since March.

The envoy had visited Damascus and met with the Syrian president and other senior officials in March and May.

The former UN secretary general presented the six-point peace plan to end the turmoil in Syria in March.

“Great efforts have been made to try and resolve this situation in a peaceful manner with a political solution,” Annan told the French Le Monde daily in a recent interview.

On June 16, head of the UN observer mission in Syria, Major General Robert Mood, said the monitoring team suspended its activities in the country due to an “intensification of armed violence.”

Annan’s third trip to Syria comes days after diplomats meeting in Geneva on June 30 reached an agreement on a Syrian-led transitional governing body that could include members of the current Syrian government and the opposition.

The foreign ministers of Russia, China, Britain, France, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi, and the secretary of state of the United States attended the meeting at the United Nations office.

Annan said the participants of the Geneva meeting agreed that the transitional governing body in Syria “could include members of the present government and the opposition and other groups, and shall be formed on the basis of mutual consent.”

However, Moscow and Beijing opposed the wording of the proposal that called for an interim government that excludes those “whose continued presence and participation would undermine the credibility of the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation.”

On July 3, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that some Western participants in the Geneva meeting “have started in their public statements to distort the agreements that were reached.”

“The consensus that was reached in Geneva was a very important step in the consolidation in the positions of all members of the international community… towards solving this problem peacefully and refusing to use military force from whatever side,” Lavrov added.

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