President Bashar al-Assad insisted in a meeting Wednesday with visiting UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that Syrians alone will decide on the fate of an initiative for Geneva peace talks. The encounter came a day after the Red Crescent evacuated hundreds of civilians from a besieged town near Damascus, in an operation that saw rare co-operation among the regime, its opponents and the international community.
Brahimi has been travelling the Middle East to muster support for proposed peace talks dubbed Geneva II. The Syrian leg of the tour is the most sensitive, as the veteran Algerian diplomat needs to persuade a wary regime and an increasingly divided opposition to attend. During his last visit to Damascus in December, Brahimi was heavily criticised in the Syrian media for asking Assad if he intended to step down at the end of his presidential term in mid-2014.
Wednesday's meeting with Assad lasted less than one hour, and the president flatly rejected attending the Geneva talks. "The Syrian people are the only ones who have the right to decide on Syria's future," state media quoted Assad as telling Brahimi. "The efforts being made for the Geneva conference to be held are focused on finding the way for the Syrians themselves to meet and to agree on solving the crisis as quickly as possible," Brahimi was quoted as saying.
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