Assad seeks ‘step by step’ end to uprising

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has suggested ending his country’s conflict on a step-by-step basis, starting with districts that have suffered the worst violence, international mediator Kofi Annan has said.

The former UN secretary general met Assad in the capital Damascus, launching a round of diplomacy to try to revive his plan for ending Syria’s 16-month-old uprising in which rebels are fighting to topple the authoritarian leader.

Speaking after talks in Iran, Annan said Assad proposed “building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence — to try and contain the violence in those districts and, step by step, build up and end the violence across the country”.

Annan, who represents the UN and the Arab League, said he needed to discuss the proposal with the Syrian opposition and could not give further details.

It was not clear how or where he planned to do this with opposition leaders, who say there can be no peaceful transition unless Assad, who tried to crush protests by armed force from the moment they began, relinquishes power first.

After talks with Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi, Annan flew to Baghdad in Iraq. He will discuss his tour with the UN Security Council in New York today.

Syria’s major ally Russia proposed what sounded like an alternative to the Western-backed, anti-Assad “Friends of Syria” forum, with an offer to visiting Syrian opposition groups to host regular meetings of Annan’s own “action group” of states, which is more balanced between pro- and anti-Assad influences.

The Syrian National Council (SNC) — the main opposition umbrella group in exile — is to hold talks today with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Major powers agreed at a meeting with Annan on June 30 that a transitional government should be set up in Syria, but are at odds over what part Assad might play in the process.

Russia, while having distanced itself from Assad by saying it would no longer deliver arms to Damascus while fighting continues, says no transition plan can pre-suppose that Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 42 years, will quit.

But Western powers and allied Gulf Arab states say he must go, and the Syrian opposition say that is their basic condition.

The activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 17,129 people have been killed in Syria’s increasingly sectarian revolt pitting rebels from the Sunni Muslim majority against Assad’s Alawites, related to Shi’ite Islam.

It said 11,897 civilians or armed insurgents had been killed by Assad’s forces along with 884 defectors. It put the death toll among Syrian security forces loyal to Mr Assad at 4,348.