DAMASCUS, Syria, Oct. 18 (UPI) — Leaders in Iran and Turkey, in a rare show of agreement, voiced support for a cease-fire proposal offered by the new U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria.
Syrian leaders, however, said they were skeptical that the rebels would honor the temporary cease-fire during the three-day Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, which begins Oct. 26, as proposed by envoy Lakdar Brahimi, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Brahimi has spent the last several days consulting with Middle East leaders, discussing possible ways to end the civil unrest that began in March 2011 and has killed an estimated 20,000 people, including at least 18 Thursday as reported by the Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Both Turkey, which backs the rebels and has called for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, and Iran, which backs Assad’s regime, publicly endorsed Brahimi’s effort Wednesday, the Times said. Turkey is home to more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who met this week with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a regional summit meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, was quoted by Iran’s state-run media as saying he supported the Syria truce proposal saying “any group that derives power through war and means to continue war has no future.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was quoted by Turkey’s Anatolian News Agency as saying a cease-fire was desirable but a longer-term truce would require “certain measures for its sustainability.”
Brahimi urged the Syrian government to support the cease-fire, saying he had guarantees from rebel leaders that they would observe the cease-fire if the government acted first, the Times said. However, a government-backed newspaper expressed doubt that insurgents, who lack a unified command, would or could uphold a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels, have become tired of waiting for substantial weaponry from western and Arab countries and are negotiating with extremist groups to get weapons, a U.S. lawmaker told CNN.
“Even rebels we’ve identified as somebody we could work with have partnered with jihadists, because they have their own sources of money and weapons,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said.
The Obama administration has cautiously assisted in vetting Syrian rebels, and has adhered to its policy of providing only non-lethal aid. Administration officials said they are cautious because of the fluidity of the Syrian civil war and difficulty in determining the ideology of rebel commanders.
“It’s not just a matter of individual leaders. It’s also a matter of ensuring that the groups that are working there are not becoming infiltrated,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
Because of its “hands off” approach, Rogers said U.S. officials don’t have access to all conversations taking place and don’t have a total picture of who is providing what to whom.
“Some of the streams of money we know about, some we don’t,” he told CNN. “Some weapons streams we know a lot about, so we don’t know anything about.”
Categories: Asia, Iran, Syria, Turkey, United Nations