Hopes for Syria peace dim after Assad, Obama remarks

BEIRUT: Hopes for a quick political transition in war-ravaged Syria dimmed Thursday as embattled President Bashar Assad threw cold water on an ambitious timetable agreed at international talks in Vienna.
At the same time, the US held firm to its calls for Assad’s departure, with President Barack Obama insisting Thursday that the war could not end unless the Syrian leader steps down.
“I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power,” Obama said on the sidelines of a trade summit in Manila.
Top diplomats from 17 countries met in Vienna Saturday to discuss a way out of Syria’s nearly five-year conflict, which has left more than a quarter of a million people dead.
They produced a two-year timetable: A transitional government would be formed and a new constitution written within six months, to be followed by internationally monitored elections within 18 months after that.
But in a television interview with Italy’s Rai television, Assad said there could be no transition schedule for elections while swathes of Syria remained out of government control.
Damascus refers to all opponents — fighters and activists alike — as terrorists. Assad also rejected the idea of UN observers monitoring elections, saying the world body had “lost all credibility.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would be ready to work with the Western coalition striking Daesh if its members respect Syria’s sovereignty.
Russia is “ready to develop with them such forms of coordination that of course would respect Syria’s sovereignty and the prerogatives of the Syrian leadership,” Lavrov told state-run Radio of Russia.
Separately, Daesh executed five men it described as spies in Iraq’s Anbar province, west of Baghdad, according to photos posted online.
The photos show the barefoot men dressed in orange jumpsuits kneeling in a street as a crowd of people, many of them apparently militants, look on.
Black-clad men wearing balaclavas are then pictured shooting them with pistols.