Syria Snap Analysis: Kofi Annan - Lost on the Road to Damascus
Friday, March 9, 2012 at 14:10 | James Miller in EA Global, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran See also Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: A UN Envoy in Damascus
The Syrian National Council's Burhan Ghalioun has today condemned statements made by the UN's envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, suggesting that a political solution in Syria is possible, and desireable:
These kind of comments are disappointing and do not give a lot of hope for people in Syria being massacred every day. It feels like we are watching the same movie being repeated over and over again ...
Any political solution will not succeed if it is not accompanied by military pressure on the regime ...
As an international envoy, we hope he will have a mechanism for ending the violence ...My fear is that, like other international envoys before him, the aim is to waste a month or two of pointless mediation efforts.
These statements echo those made by the ranking members of the Free Syrian Army, other ranking members of the SNC, the various splinter groups, many of whom are even more hawkish than the SNC, every contact we have within the opposition, and nearly every single video that comes out of Syria.
Our assessment - We've been wondering if Kofi Annan is in the right country. Maybe he got lost on the road to Damascus, because from what we've seen, there is no chance of reconciliation between the regime and the opposition.