Both official media and the opposition branded as a failure a world powers deal on a transition plan for Syria as at least 21 people were reported killed Sunday in violence nationwide.
The latest violence follows a deadly Saturday when at least 120 people died across the country.
World powers meeting in Geneva on Saturday agreed a transition plan that could include current regime members, but the West did not see any role for President Bashar al-Assad in a new unity government. Russia and China insisted that Syrians themselves must decide how the transition happens, rather than allow others to dictate their fate. Moscow and Beijing, which have twice blocked UN Security Council resolutions on Syria, both signed up to the final agreement that did not make any explicit call for Assad to cede power.
Official Syrian media and the opposition Local Coordination Committees (LCC) group demonstrated rare agreement in slamming the outcome. The meeting “failed,” trumpeted Al-Baath, newspaper of the ruling party. “The agreement of the task force on Syria in Geneva on Saturday resembles an enlarged meeting of the UN Security Council where the positions of participants remained the same,” it said.
The LCC, which organises protests on the ground in Syria, said the outcome showed once again the failure to adopt a common position. It called the transition accord “just one version, different in form only, of the demands of Russian leaders allied to the Assad regime and who cover it militarily and politically in the face of international pressure.”
Burhan Ghalioun, a senior member and former head of the opposition Syrian National Council, told pan-Arab television Al-Arabiya that “this is the worst international statement yet to emerge from talks on Syria.” According to the SNC’s official Facebook page, he described the plan as a “farce.” Ghalioun called a “mockery” the notion that Syrians should negotiate with “their executioner, who has not stopped killing, torturing… and raping women for 16 months.”
Iran, a strong ally of Assad, echoed similar sentiment, saying the Geneva meeting was “unsuccessful” because both Syria and Iran were not invited. “This meeting was unsuccessful… because Syria was not present and some influential nations were not present,” Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab-African Affairs Hossein Amir Abdolahian told state television.
The United States and European nations reportedly opposed the presence of Iran, although UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan and UN chief Ban Ki-moon had wanted Tehran to attend.
‘Compromise agreement’: The Geneva deal came despite initial pessimism about the prospects of the talks amid deep divisions between the West and China and Russia on how to end the violence that the Observatory says has killed more than 15,800 since March 2011.
On Sunday, at least 21 people were killed in fighting across Syria, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights said, including five in the central province of Hama.
Annan said on Saturday it was up to the Syrians to decide who they wanted in a unity government. But he added: “I would doubt that Syrians… would select people with blood on their hands to lead them.”
The United States and France both said it was clear there was no future role for Assad.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague admitted the deal was a “compromise agreement” as Russia played up the fact that it had convinced other world powers that it would be “unacceptable” to exclude any party from the transition.
Moscow is loath to cast ally Assad aside, even as relations between them have cooled. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “How exactly the work on a transition to a new stage is conducted will be decided by the Syrians themselves.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also stressed that “outsiders cannot make decisions for the Syrian people.”