Assad Appeals to African Summit for Help to End Conflict
Syrian President Bashar Assad has appealed to the leaders of a five-nation economic forum to intervene to stop the violence in Syria and encourage dialogue in his country's two-year conflict.
Assad said Syria is being subjected to "acts of terrorism backed by Arab, regional and Western nations" — a reference to the Western-backed opposition fighting his regime.
His appeal came in a letter sent to the BRICS forum of emerging market powers. The World Bank says these countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — are driving global economic growth.
Assad's letter was published by Syria's state media on Tuesday.
Syria's crisis began in March 2011 with protests demanding Assad's ouster. Following a harsh government crackdown, the uprising steadily grew more violent until it became a full-fledged civil war.
Assad said in his letter that “the Syrian people are looking forward to work with BRICS countries as moderate forces seeking to spread peace, security and cooperation between the states away from hegemony and dictates.”
His appeal came a day after Syria's opposition took over the country's seat for the first time at an Arab summit Tuesday.
The opposition's ascension to representing the country at the summit in Qatar, a key backer of the those fighting to topple Assad, demonstrated the extent of the regime's isolation two years into a ferocious civil war that the U.N. says has killed an estimated 70,000 people.
In Damascus, the government on Tuesday blasted the Arab League's decision, portraying it as a selling-out of Arab identity to please Israel and the United States.
"The shameful decisions it (Arab League) has taken against the Syrian people since the beginning of the crisis and until now have sustained our conviction that it has exchanged its Arab identity with a Zionist-American one," said an editorial in the Al-Thawra newspaper, a government mouthpiece.
Source: Associated Press, Naharnet
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