Peace envoy Brahimi in talks with Syria's Assad

UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi met briefly with President Bashar al-Assad Wednesday, the third day of a Damascus visit aimed at bringing Syria‘s warring parties to the negotiating table.

The encounter came a day after the Red Crescent oversaw the evacuation of about 500 women, children and elderly civilians from a besieged town near Damascus, in an operation that saw rare cooperation between the regime, its opponents and the international community.

More than 115,000 people have been killed in the 31-month armed uprising against the Assad regime triggered by his forces’ bloody crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests.

Brahimi has been travelling throughout the Middle East to drum up support for Geneva peace talks, and the Syrian leg of the tour is the most sensitive as he needs to persuade a wary regime and an increasingly divided opposition to attend.

The Algerian envoy was criticised by the Syrian media for asking Assad if he intended to step down after the end of his presidential term in mid-2014 during his last visit to Damascus in December.

His latest meeting with Assad lasted less than one hour, and no information has yet filtered out on the content of their talks.

On the eve of the talks, the regime said only Syrians can choose their future, rejecting Western and Arab demands the president step down.

“Syria will attend Geneva II based on the exclusive right of the Syrian people to choose their political future, to choose their leaders and to reject all forms of external intervention,” Foreign Minister Walid Muallem told Brahimi, referring to proposed talks in Switzerland.

He also said all statements about the country’s future, especially “the one from London”, were “infringements on the rights of the Syrian people” and “preconditions to the dialogue before it has even started”.

That was a reference to an October 22 meeting at which Assad’s opponents and countries that back them — including the United States — declared he had no future role to play in Syria.

Brahimi insisted the Geneva talks would be “between the Syrian parties” and that only Syrians would decide their future, the official SANA news agency reported.

The UN-Arab League envoy added there was agreement on “the importance of ending the violence, terrorism and respecting Syrian sovereignty,” according to SANA.

Vice premier sacked

The main opposition National Coalition has said it will refuse to attend any talks unless Assad’s resignation is on the table, and some rebel groups have warned anyone who goes will be considered a traitor.

In a defiant interview broadcast this month, Assad himself cast doubt on the possibility of talks, saying he will not negotiate with any group tied to the rebels or to foreign states.

With prospects dimming of Geneva II taking place next month as hoped, Assad sacked his vice premier, Qadri Jamil, for being absent without leave and carrying out unauthorised meetings abroad.

The dismissal comes after Jamil met with the US pointman for Syria, Robert Ford, in Geneva on Saturday to discuss the proposed talks.

The United States said that during the meeting, Jamil had represented “a government-affiliated internal opposition party” and that Ford had told him “Assad and the inner circle have lost legitimacy and must go”.

The devastating war has triggered a massive humanitarian crisis as people have fled or become trapped by the spiralling violence.

On Tuesday some 500 women, children and elderly civilians were evacuated from Moadamiyet al-Sham, a town southwest of Damascus that the army has besieged for nearly a year, activists said.

“All sides, without exception, took part, including the opposition as represented by the National Coalition, the regime… and the international community,” they said.

Widespread malnutrition has been reported in the town, especially among children, because of a total blockade on the entry of food and other vital goods.

Moadamiyet al-Sham was the scene of one of the army’s chemical attacks near Damascus on August 21, which killed hundreds of people.

The civilians who have left the town have now joined the millions of internally displaced people in Syria’s conflict.

In another measure of Syria’s disintegration, the World Health Organisation confirmed 10 polio cases in the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor, all of them in children under the age of two.

Peace envoy Brahimi in talks with Syria's Assad