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Brahimi admitted that solving the Syrian crisis was a “very, very difficult” process, but there was a “microscopic” chance that a truce may lead to a permanent ceasefire.
“The Syrian people will not enjoy a happy Eid al-Adha holiday, but they should at least enjoy a truce,” he said after talks with Lebanese officials in the capital Beirut.
“This will be a microscopic chance to lead to a permanent ceasefire, halting the smuggling of arms, and an agreement on a political solution,” added Brahimi.
He said he was visiting Syria’s neighbours to listen to their views on the crisis. He added he would visit Damascus, but did not specify the date.
Brahimi’s call for a truce during the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, which falls later this month, has fallen on deaf ears in Damascus as state-run Al-Thawra newspaper, a government mouthpiece, said the initiative would likely fail because the rebels fighting to topple Bashar Assad’s regime had no unified leadership to agree to it.
Al-Thawra said that the biggest obstacle to the truce was the lack of an authority to sign for the rebels.
“There is the state, represented by the government and the army on one front, but who is on the other front?” the paper asked in an editorial.
All international efforts to end Syria’s civil war to date have failed. Both rebels and government forces have disregarded previous cease-fires, and the scores of rebel units fighting to topple the regime have no unified leadership.
Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi said in statement to the state news agency that the government was waiting for Brahimi to come to Damascus to convey to officials there the results of his tour. He said that his government would welcome any “constructive initiative”, but affirmed that any step, regardless of its type, required commitment by all sides in order for it to succeed.
Meanwhile, Syria’s divided rebels have agreed to set up a joint leadership to oversee their battle to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, two insurgent sources said on Tuesday as fighting raged in cities across the country.
Rebels hope the decision, taken after increasing pressure from foreign supporters on them to unite, will help convince those backers that they are a credible and coordinated fighting force deserving to be supplied with more powerful weapons.
“The agreement has been reached, they only need to sign it now,” one rebel source said. Foreign supporters “are telling us: ‘Sort yourselves out and unite, we need a clear and credible side to provide it with quality weapons’.”
He said Qatar and Turkey were the main drivers behind the agreement, which might be formally announced this month.
It is the latest attempt to bring together Assad’s disparate armed opponents, most of whom have fought nominally under the banner of the rebel Free Syrian Army but who in practice have operated independently, often weakened by deep rivalries.
The new leadership will include FSA leaders Riad al-Asaad and Mustafa Sheikh — criticised by many rebels because they are based in Turkey — and recently defected General Mohammad Haj Ali, as well as heads of rebel provincial military councils inside Syria like Qassem Saadeddine, based in Homs province.
The Syrian National Council has set 4 November as the date for an opposition unity conference in Qatar, organisers said.
The British Observatory for Human Rights said 80 people had been killed in Syria by dusk on Tuesday, after 160 died on Monday. Heavy clashes broke out in the city of Hama, and fighting continued in Aleppo and the northern province of Idlib.
A correspondent on Lebanon’s north-eastern border with Syria saw a helicopter dropping explosives on the Syrian side of the frontier. Refugees unloading blankets from a pickup truck in an olive grove on the Lebanese side stopped to watch big black plumes of smoke rising into the sky.
Underlining increasing international concern about the conflict, Pope Benedict will send a group of top cardinals to visit Syria in coming days to express solidarity with its battered population, the Vatican news service said. — AFP
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