| New York Times | - |
BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Syrian
government on Tuesday fired a deputy prime minister who has lately been
its most outspoken voice in favor of reform and who recently held
meetings with American and Russian officials about peace talks that
world leaders ...
Syria Fires Official Who Tried to Broker Peace
Khaled Al-Hariri/Reuters
More Syrian families on
Tuesday left the besieged town of Moadhamiya, a suburb of Damascus that
has been blockaded for months by the government.
By ANNE BARNARD
Published: October 29, 2013
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government on Tuesday fired a deputy prime minister who has lately been its most outspoken voice
in favor of reform and who recently held meetings with American and
Russian officials about peace talks that world leaders are trying to
arrange to end Syria’s civil war.
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Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil was fired Tuesday,
three days after he met with the United States ambassador to Syria,
Robert S. Ford, in Geneva.
The official, Qadri Jamil, was dismissed for spending too much time
outside Syria, neglecting his duties and holding meetings “without
coordinating with the government,” state television said. Mr. Jamil was
fired shortly after he told the Russian news media that he had met with
United States officials. Meetings between Syrian and American officials
have been rare since the Syrian uprising began in 2011.
A State Department spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that the United
States ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, met with Mr. Jamil on
Saturday in Geneva, calling the encounter one in “a long list” of
meetings with people directly or indirectly connected to the Syrian
government to discuss the potential peace talks.
Mr. Jamil, a Soviet-educated economist, was one of two members of
tolerated opposition parties appointed to the government last year in a
move billed as broadening its base. In an interview last month in
Damascus, the Syrian capital, he blamed corrupt people on both sides for
prolonging the war, and he said that despite his post, he was part of
the “patriotic opposition,” which has not supported the armed uprising.
Behind the scenes, American and Russian officials have been meeting with
Syrians inside and outside government to set up the planned talks. But
there is little sign of movement, with the main exile opposition group
demanding the departure of President Bashar al-Assad as a precondition
and Mr. Assad saying he will not talk with those bearing arms against
him.
The State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the firing did not
represent any broader message about the Syrian government’s willingness
to participate. But opposition activists called it a ploy that would
allow Russia to present Mr. Jamil as a representative of the opposition
during peace talks.
And analysts said it could be a strong warning that Mr. Assad planned to
remain fully in control of any peace talks or political transition — a
message delivered as Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint United Nations-Arab
League envoy on Syria, visits Damascus to try to catalyze a peace
process.
Randa Slim, a Syria expert at the New America Foundation, a public
policy institute in Washington, said the firing of Mr. Jamil served to
remind the United States and Russia that any peace talks “must go
through Assad.”
“Sacking Qadri Jamil is also a sign of how strong #Assad feels today,” Ms. Slim posted on Twitter. “Jamil was very much #Russia’s man.”
Analysts in the region and supporters and opponents of Mr. Assad alike
say that with the Syrian government holding its own and the rebels
divided, it appears increasingly likely that the talks, if they take
place, will work toward a deal in which Mr. Assad stays on, at least for
an initial transition phase.
Mr. Jamil, speaking from Moscow to the Lebanese television channel Al
Mayadeen after being fired Tuesday, said that his disagreements with the
government were mild and declared that the demand for Mr. Assad to step
down was “crippling” the dialogue before it could start.
“The idea of Assad stepping down is out of the question,” he said.
Mr. Jamil said it made little sense for the government, which has said
it will attend the Geneva talks, to blame him for meeting with the
talks’ sponsors, adding that he was working to “end the blood bath in
Syria.”
But he said that while he did not want to work with the Syrian
government as a full-time partisan, he would go to Geneva as part of a
loyal opposition and would eventually return to Syria.
At their meeting last week, Mr. Jamil tried unsuccessfully to persuade
Mr. Ford to allow him to attend the meeting as an opposition member,
Reuters reported, citing a Middle Eastern official. Neither the armed
opposition nor the main umbrella group for the nonviolent opposition,
the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, accept Mr. Jamil
as an opposition member. And in recent weeks, he had been stripped of
his economic portfolio and scapegoated by state-controlled media for
Syria’s inflation and food and fuel shortages.
In another move that appeared aimed at positioning the government for
Geneva, Mr. Assad on Tuesday issued an amnesty lifting criminal
penalties for those who deserted the army, provided they turn themselves
in and rejoin the service within 30 days if they are in Syria and 60 if
they are abroad.
While the government says small numbers of fighters have accepted
amnesties, fighters and opposition activists said the offer was unlikely
to win broad acceptance.
Ryan C. Crocker, a former United States ambassador to Syria, called the
deal “a good gambit before Geneva, if it ever happens.”
“It would require the opposition to admit to being criminals, which of
course they won’t do,” he said, adding that Mr. Assad could then argue,
“They had their chance and must be pursued as unrepentant enemies of the
state.”
Maher, a former Syrian political prisoner who is now in Lebanon and gave
only his first name for fear of reprisals, said in a telephone
interview that such an amnesty, if accepted, would be “a coronation of
Assad’s victory over the revolution.”
But many Syrians are still cautiously exploring deals to ease the bloodshed.
The persistence — and fragility — of such attempts was underscored again on Tuesday as hundreds more civilians left the Damascus suburb of Moadhamiya,
which has been blockaded for months by the government. They departed
under a cease-fire brokered between rebels there and a delegation
including a Roman Catholic nun and Syria’s minister of social affairs.
But within hours, residents of Moadhamiya were reporting that scores of
evacuees had been immediately detained at a nearby military base.
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