An international envoy to Syria on the road to failure

 

ARABIC MEDIA REVIEW
An international envoy to Syria on the road to failure

America got what it deserved for allowing the offensive film, writes one Arab editor

 

Syrian envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi meets President Bashar Assad, September 15 (photo credit: AP/SANA)

Syrian envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi meets President Bashar Assad, September 15 (photo credit: AP/SANA)

A meeting between Syrian President Bashar Assad and the international envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, leads Arab news on Sunday.

London-based daily Al-Hayat begins its coverage with Assad’s pledge to engage any “neutral and independent” intermediaries, and enter in dialogue “that will represent the will of all Syrians.”

Saudi-owned daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, on the other hand, focuses on Brahimi, who stated following his meeting with Assad that “the crisis is worsening, and Assad knows its extent better than I do.” The daily also reports that Free Syrian Army fighters found the body of an Iranian officer following a battle in the city of Aleppo. The daily denies reports that Christians in Syria have started to form armed pro-regime militias tasked with quashing the uprising, which began in March 2011.

‘Will Brahimi succeed in his mission? I am almost certain he will not. He may bring about a ceasefire, and even that will be temporary’

London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi reports in its headline that Brahimi met with members of the Syrian opposition before meeting with Assad. The daily also reports that surface-to-air missiles have arrived in Turkey from Libya, to be sent to the Syrian opposition.

Al-Hayat columnist Khaled Dakhil expresses pessimism in an op-ed Sunday titled “The Quartet and Brahimi: Failure is more likely than success,” about the prospects of an international solution on Syria. By Quartet, Dakhil refers to the new coalition of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, created through an initiative by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to discuss diplomatic solutions to the crisis.

“Will Brahimi succeed in his mission? I am almost certain he will not. He may bring about a ceasefire, and even that will be temporary. The regime will not be able to publicly refuse such a request, and the armed opposition will not accept it before the regime does, and under binding international auspices. Why will it not succeed? Because the only way to a political solution accepted by most sides is Assad’s resignation. The president knows this well, and refuses it completely,” writes Dakhil.

“The regional quartet completely resembles the international quartet that oversees the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. That quartet failed in its mission because success was not its goal as much as providing international cover to Israeli stalling. Three members of the regional quartet want success: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. But the fourth member, Iran, knows that success will be costly; since it does not want to bear the brunt of failure alone, it now demands to add Iraq to the committee, because the Iraqi government comes under its sway.”

The anti-Islamic American film continues to make waves

Arab editorials continue to heatedly discuss the anti-Islamic film “Innocence of Muslims” and its fallout.

Egyptian columnist A-Sayid Yassin reports that the government of the Netherlands is offering political asylum to any Coptic Egyptian who can prove he has been oppressed in Egypt and that the government there did nothing to prevent that. Yassin calls the Dutch decision “a blatant attack on Egyptian sovereignty.”

“The most dangerous current trend in the Western assault on the sovereignty of Arab countries is the imperialistic meddling in the issue of minorities. Western mouthpieces claim that these minorities — and especially the Egyptian Copts — are subjected to oppression. However the term ‘minority’ cannot be applied to the Copts, since they are an integral part of Egypt’s social fabric, which never knew sectarianism.”

‘The most dangerous current trend in the Western assault on the sovereignty of Arab countries is the imperialistic meddling in the issue of minorities’

Al-Quds Al-Arabi editor Abd Al-Bari Atwan admits that he watched parts of the film “with nausea and disgust,” and submits his impression to the readers. He claims that the film’s creators intended to sow sectarian strife within Egypt, but failed to do so and instead got a taste of their own medicine.

“Those who produced this film knew what they were doing. They planned this strife well and expected the angry Islamic and Arab reactions, because they’ve studied the Islamic mentality and its sensitivity to this matter.”

“They also knew full well the high esteem in which a billion and a half Muslims hold the prophet. The sedition which they wanted and the damage which they planned to inflict upon the Islamic world came back at them and at their patron the US, and its diplomats and embassies across the world,” writes Atwan.