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Summary Annan says transitional government should include Assad and opposition members to arrange elections
World powers struck an agreementthat a transitional government should be set up in Syria to endthe conflict there but they remained at odds over what partPresident Bashar al-Assad might play in the process.Peace envoy Kofi Annan said after the talks in Geneva,the government should include members of Assadsadministration and the Syrian opposition and that it shouldarrange free elections.Time is running out. The conflict must be resolved throughpeaceful dialogue and negotiations, Annan told reporters.The talks had been billed as a last-ditch effort to halt theworsening violence in Syria but hit obstacles as Russia, Assadsmost powerful ally, opposed Western and Arab insistence that hemust quit the scene. The final communique said the transitional government shouldbe formed on the basis of mutual consent.In a victory for Russia, it omitted text in a previous draftwhich explicitly said the plan would exclude from governmentanyone whose participation would undermine the transitionscredibility and jeopardise stability and reconciliation.After the meeting, the United States and Russia contradictedeach other over what that meant for Assad, who has ruled Syriafor 11 years since succeeding his father Hafez and has beencondemned internationally for the ferocity of his crackdown onthe uprising against him.Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he wasdelighted with the result. The key point was that the deal didnot attempt to impose a process on Syria, he said.It did not imply at all that Assad should step down as therewere no preconditions excluding any group from the proposednational unity government, Lavrov said.But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it sent aclear message to Assad that he must quit.Assad will still have to go, Clinton told reporters. Whatwe have done here is to strip away the fiction that he and thosewith blood on their hands can stay in power. Annan convened the meeting at the United Nations complex onthe shores of Lake Geneva to salvage a peace plan that haslargely been ignored by the Assad government. He said at theopening that the conflict was in danger of growing into aregional and international crisis.At its conclusion, the Nobel peace laureate fielded aquestion on whether people with blood on their hands could bepart of a transitional government by saying:I would doubt that the Syrians who have fought so hard fortheir independence to be able to have a say in how they aregoverned and who governs them will select people with blood ontheir hands to lead them.I cannot say that I am really happy but I am content withthe outcome today.Annans plan for a negotiated solution to the 16-month-oldconflict is the only one on the table. More than 10,000 peoplehave been killed since the anti-Assad uprising began and thepast few weeks have been among the bloodiest. Assads government forces killed more than 30 people inDamascus on Saturday when they fired a mortar bomb into afuneral procession for a man who died in shelling a day before,said opposition activists. Government forces pushed their way into Douma on theoutskirts of the capital after weeks of siege and shelling.Fleeing residents spoke of corpses in the streets.Britains ITV showed footage of clouds of black smoke overhouses and said warplanes had struck at targets there. The army also attacked pro-opposition areas in Deir al-Zor,Homs, Idlib and the outskirts of Damascus, activists said.
