UN Special Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi’s efforts to kickstart peace talks have been going nowhere fast, but his comments in an interview with the BBC yesterday, appearing aimed at courting the rebels, may have made it even more difficult for him to get any talks going.
In the interview, Brahimi abandon the strategy of neutrality of his predecessor, Kofi Annan, and announced that in his estimation the Assad family’s uninterrupted 40 year rule over Syria was “a little bit too long.”
Assad government officials are condemning Brahimi for the comments, saying his call for regime change shows “flagrant bias” against the government, a reaction which was entirely predictable.
Brahimi’s comments may have gained him some support among rebels, but since the rebel factions reject negotiations on general principle, this probably won’t change much, and if anything, it will lead the regime to take Brahimi’s calls even less seriously than before.
