Syria, Assad and negotiations

This is a cross post of a comment I will post on another of my blogs in a few days:


   President Assad has claimed that he is prepared to discuss everything, including his presidency, which he claims is linked to the Constitution and thus a referendum is required (which is not possible under the sort of duress which exists at present: this notion is fanciful at best, and more probably a diversion by a skilled manipulator – what is needed now is a stable ceasefire to stop the killing above all else, humanitarian aid – including restoring the water supply to Damascus [otherwise the rebels are dragging themselves down to Assad’s level, and showing their unfitness to provide a credible step towards democracy], and the prospect of further talks The comments [which sounded chilling] about – in effect – the lack of an opposition candidate reflect the decades of repression by the Assad family, as much as anything else), and that his army is responsible for taking every inch of Syria back – true enough, technically, but the problem is that – even with the military aid of the Russians, his military is too weak to do so: the could only take Aleppo by allowing other areas of Syria to fall. More fundamentally, this shows how unwilling Bashar al-Assad is to share even a drop of power);