Annan ready for ‘mission impossible' in Syria

Former UN chief Kofi Annan Former UN chief Kofi Annan on Wednesday will launch a diplomatic ‘mission impossible’ aiming to convince Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad to silence the guns blamed for thousands of deaths in the past year, as hundreds of Syrians crossed into Lebanon in the past 24 hours to escape the heaviest shelling of their border towns.
Annan will hold talks with Arab League leaders in Cairo in a last chance to send a signal of his intentions before he heads to Damascus on Saturday as joint special envoy for the United Nations and the 22-nation Arab bloc.
Few hold out any chance that he will be able to halt the conflict, which will be one year old on March 15.
The International Crisis Group think tank said it is offering “very long odds.” The chances for diplomacy in Syria are “slim,” added Richard Gowan of New York University’s Center on International Cooperation.
Annan himself called it “a tough challenge” last week when he was named, according to AFP.
But the Nobel Peace Prize winner is seen as one of the few international figures with the diplomatic muscle to pull off such a coup.
Annan had regular contacts with Assad when he was secretary general though he admitted they have not spoken for some time. His criticism of NATO’s action in Libya last year could also give him credibility with Syria and its dwindling band of supporters.
The immediate aim of the first Damascus talks, however, will be to secure a humanitarian pause in the fighting and access to the protest cities where the UN says more than 7500 people have been killed.
Then, Annan said, he would “work with the Syrians in coming up with a peaceful solution which respects their aspirations and eventually stabilizes the country.”
Annan has insisted that he must be the only international mediator dealing with Assad, a message backed by current UN leader Ban Ki-moon who highlighted the “immense challenges” and said his predecessor “needs the full and undivided support of the international community
He will in particular need the backing of Russia and China, which vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions on Syria. Both have their own envoys in the region.
Li Huaxin, China’s former ambassador to Syria, will be in Damascus on Wednesday. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will be in Cairo on Saturday to meet Arab League chief Nabil Al-Arabi.
With Arab opinion turning against Assad, pressure is growing on them to condemn the violence that Ban called “atrocious” and “grisly.”
The UN and diplomats, say they do not expect to see Russia or China launch initiatives that go against Annan.
“I suspect there will be cooperation with Mr Annan. Mr Annan will probably take into account what they are doing and he will be discussing the situation with them," said deputy UN spokesman Eduardo del Buey.
The United Nations says more than 7500 civilians have died in Syria’s crackdown on protests against Assad’s government.
An Arab League plan adopted on January 22 calls for Assad to hand over power to a deputy. Russia, in particular, vehemently opposes any such idea.
Ban indicated however that his super-envoy would not just press this plan.
Annan would have “broader flexibility” to have a better chance of getting through to the Damascus government, Ban said. “This is what we have agreed, rather than sticking to any specific point” in the Arab League plan, he said.
So Annan is considered to have the diplomatic muscle, but Assad seems just as determined not to end his assault or step down.
Hundreds cross into Lebanon
Braving army patrols and winter weather, hundreds of Syrians crossed into Lebanon in the past 24 hours to escape the heaviest shelling of their border towns since the uprising against Assad began last March.
In the hillside town of Arsal in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, residents said 100 to 150 families arrived from Syria on Sunday -- one of the biggest refugee influxes so far, according to Reuters.
Some Western powers expressed hope that Vladimir Putin’s election as Russian president on Sunday might provide an opening for a change in policy.
British Prime Minister David Cameron called Putin on Monday to discuss Syria and other matters of international concern, a spokesman for Cameron said.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Moscow had isolated itself with regard to the Arab world and the international community following its stance on Syria.
Juppe said he did not think it was impossible to get a UN Security Council resolution and that this was something that Paris would be working on in the coming days.
Western envoys at the United Nations said last week that the United States had drafted an outline for a new resolution demanding access for humanitarian aid workers in besieged Syrian towns and an end to the violence there.
Teams of the Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent have reached two neighbourhoods of Homs where they are distributing food and blankets to civilians, including families who have fled the devastated district of Baba Amr, according to humanitarian agencies.
The arrival of relief supplies in Syria's third-largest city, with about one million inhabitants, came amid reports by activists of shelling and other violence across the country on Sunday, as well as one of the biggest waves of refugees across the border into Lebanon in a single day.
"We are in the neighbourhoods of Al-Inshaat and Al-Tawzii. Al-Inshaat is the closest neighbourhood to Baba Amr," Hicham Hassan, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), announced in Geneva, Switzerland, on Monday.
"Obviously there is the resident population in need of help, as that neighbourhood was also affected by the violence, but it also hosts many families who have fled Baba Amr."
An ICRC convoy carrying food for "several thousand people" and other relief supplies had also arrived in Homs from Damascus, the second in less than a week, Hassan said.
However, the ICRC has not yet been able to enter the neigbourhood of Baba Amr. The Syrian authorities have granted permission, but the organisations has security concerns.
Conditions in Baba Amr have been described as catastrophic, with reports describing extended power cuts, shortages of food and water, and no medical care for the sick and wounded.
"We hope to get in [to Baba Amr] as soon as possible and we want to get in as soon as possible," Hassan said.
The developments come against a backdrop of continued assault and widening bombardment by Syrian forces on Homs, activists said.
Artillery also pounded Rastan, an opposition stronghold in the centre of the country, monitors said on Monday.
Elsewhere, an explosion hit an oil pipeline near the town of Quraiya in the eastern province of Deir Al-Zour as troops began a military operation in the region, opposition activists said.
They said a bomb appeared to have been detonated near the pipeline, which runs to a coastal refinery on the coast, and smoke could be seen 5km away.
On the diplomatic front, it has been announced that Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League special envoy to Syria, will travel to Damascus on March 10 for his first visit since being appointed to the post last month, the Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said on Monday.
"Kofi Annan told me that Syria will receive him on March 10 and that he would arrive in Cairo on March 7," Nabil Al-Arabi, the Arab League secretary-general, said at the regional bloc's Cairo headquarters on Monday.
Annan will be accompanied by his deputy, the former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser Al-Kidwa, on their first mission to Syria.
Kidwa, a nephew of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, is a member of Fatah, led by current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and has previously served as a foreign minister and an envoy to the UN.
The UN humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, separately announced that Syria had given her permission to visit the country, scheduled for March 7-9.
In another diplomatic development, the president of the UN General Assembly has sharply criticised the UN Security Council over its failure to agree to a resolution on Syria.
Nasser Abdul Aziz Al-Nassir, Qatar's ambassador to the UN, who was elected as president of the General Assembly in 2011,  told the UK’s Independent newspaper  that there was a need for a "more active and effective UN" and that the ability of just five countries to veto Security Council decisions was a system that could endanger international peace and security.
The General Assembly last month voted overwhelmingly to condemn the Syrian government over its crackdown, but action by the Security Council has been blocked by Russian and Chinese vetoes.
"The world has changed; the UN should also reform itself to deal with the issues of today," the Independent quoted Al-Nassir as saying on Monday.
"Because of disagreement from one or two members who have the right to veto, this sent the wrong message to the government of Syria; that's why they are not co-operating."
Qatar has consistently pushed for tougher UN-backed action against Syria and was a co-sponsor of the proposed Security Council resolution that was blocked by Russia and China.
It has also called for Syria's opposition to be armed and for Arab League troops to be deployed to the country.
China, which had said the resolution would have opened the door to intervention against Assad's government, offered a proposal on Sunday to end the violence in Syria, calling for an immediate ceasefire and talks by all parties but standing firm against any intervention by outside forces.
However, the proposal also said "China does not approve of armed interference or pushing for 'regime change' in Syria and believes that use or threat of sanctions does not help to resolve the issue''.