Minister Says Brahimi Success 'Does Not Depend on Syria'

The success of a new international peace envoy to Syria depends on states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and not on Syria, a Syrian minister told reporters in Damascus on Monday.

"The success of Lakhdar Brahimi does not depend on Syria," said Information Minister Omran al-Zoabi.

"Brahimi's success depends on certain states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey respecting his mission, by closing their borders to armed men, and by ceasing to provide weapons," he said.

Newly appointed peace envoy Brahimi is due to arrive in Syria "soon," a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday.

Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, was appointed to replace former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan as the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria after Annan's six-point peace plan failed to stop the bloodshed in the country.

In a press conference that ran over 90 minutes, the information minister reiterated the Syrian regime's official position that the crisis in the strife-torn country was prompted not by the repression of a popular uprising, but by an "international conspiracy."

"I don't understand how there can be a revolution if what is happening is killing and kidnapping," said Zoabi. "What is happening is a conspiracy, an aggression by proxy, and its tools are hidden."

Zoabi went on to say that the regime of President Bashar Assad "welcomes any initiative to help Syria overcome the conspiracy that it is suffering from, and welcomes any initiative that doesn't affect our national sovereignty and security."

More than 26,000 people have been killed in violence in Syria since the outbreak of an uprising against Assad in March last year, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.