Arab League chief satisfied after talks with Assad

 

Arab League chief Amr Mussa said after talks Saturday with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad he was satisfied and moving step by step toward mediating a solution to Lebanon”s political crisis.
 
“The discussions were important. I am satisfied,” Mussa told reporters.

 

“We are advancing step by step,” said Mussa, who arrived Friday in Syria from neighbouring Lebanon, which has been without a president since November 23.

 

Syria has been accused by the United States and its alliees of blocking the election of a new president, and Damascus has levelled similar charges against the United States.

 

MPs from Lebanon”s Western-backed ruling coalition and the opposition, backed by Syria and Iran, are due to meet again on Monday to try to elect a president, after 12 previous parliamentary sessions were postponed.

 

“I am neither pessimistic nor optimistic,” said Mussa, who also met Syrian Vice President Faruq al-Shara and had dinner Friday with Foreign Minister Walid Moallem and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jaber al-Thani.

 

Mussa has been trying to win support for a three-point Arab plan calling for the election of Lebanese army chief General Michel Sleiman as president, a national unity government in which no one party has veto power and the adoption of a new electoral law.

 

Although the ruling coalition has backed the plan, the Hezbollah-led opposition insists that the opposition be granted a third of the seats in a new government so it can have veto power.

 

Syria”s state news agency said Mussa and Assad discussed “contacts set up in Beirut to resolve the standing problems between the (feuding Lebanese) parties.”

 

Mussa said on Friday that he had made progress in negotiations between the pro- and anti-Syrian factions although he was still far from a solution.

 

“We have taken measures that I hope will result in defusing the crisis,” Mussa said, following marathon talks.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah criticised on Saturday Arab leaders who have been pushing the league”s plan to end the crisis, saying they should refrain from giving lessons about democracy.

 

“I find it strange that Arab leaders speak about … democracy when their own regimes know nothing about it,” Nasrallah said at a Beirut rally, while reiterating that his group supported the Arab League plan.

 

Picture: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (R) shakes hands with Arab League chief Amr Mussa in Damascus. Mussa said after talks with Syrian Assad he was satisfied and moving step by step toward mediating a solution to Lebanon”s political crisis.
(AFP/Louai Beshara)