GENEVA: Syria’s transitional authorities must strive for a more inclusive process, bringing in different parties and communities to avoid new civil strife, the United Nations envoy for Syria said Wednesday.
“My biggest concern is that the transition will create new contradictions in the manner that could lead to new civil strife and potentially a new civil war,” Geir Pedersen told AFP in a brief interview in Geneva.
Longtime Syrian president Bashar Assad fled Syria on Sunday after a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) militant group and its allies, which brought to a spectacular end five decades of brutal rule by his clan.
Mohammad Al-Bashir, whom the militants appointed as the transitional head of government, has sought to allay fears over how Syria would be ruled and how minorities would be treated.
“Precisely because we are Islamic, we will guarantee the rights of all people and all sects in Syria,” he told Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Pedersen told AFP that Bashir’s appointment had “created some negative reactions among Syrians, because they were afraid that this was a way for one group to monopolize power.”
“I think it’s extremely important that the new authorities in Damascus make clear what they want to achieve during these three months,” he said.
The initial signals, Pedersen said, indicated the transitional authorities “understood that they need to prepare for a more inclusive process,” bringing onboard different parties, sectors of society and armed factions, as well as women.
He said he hoped the need for inclusiveness was understood.
“If not, it will not only create nervousness inside of Syria, with the potential for new civil strife, even civil war, but it will also create negative reactions from neighboring countries,” Pedersen warned.
“There is so much at stake that it is extremely important that messages coming out from the armed group in Damascus… (are) reassuring to all communities in Syria and also to the international community.”
Pedersen also stressed that it was “important that no international actor is doing anything that could derail the very complicated transitional process.”
Since Assad’s ouster, Israel, which borders Syria, has sent troops into a buffer zone on the east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, in a move the UN has said violates the 1974 armistice.
“This is obviously a violation of the agreement from the 1974 and it’s also a violation, it goes without saying, of Syria sovereignty and territorial integrity and unity,” Pedersen said.
The Israeli military has also said it has conducted hundreds of strikes against Syrian military assets in the past two days, targeting everything from chemical weapons stores to air defenses to keep them out of militant hands.
Pedersen said he had spoken with Syrian ambassadors, whom the transitional authorities asked to remain in their posts, about Israel’s chemical weapons fears.
“They are emphasising very strongly that they are respecting the agreements that were put in place and they are not going to play with this,” he said.
