Iraqi FM: “Nothing New” in Baghdad Summit over Syria crisis

Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Wednesday that Baghdad’s Arab summit will issue a resolution over Syria’s crisis, but said “nothing new” will come out of this summit conference except backing the ongoing international efforts to resolve the crisis.

•  “There is no new initiative (by the summit) over Syria’s issue, but there is a draft resolution that would mesh together between the Arab and the international attitudes,” Zebari said during a press conference in Baghdad, referring to that the Arab’s initiative would back the international efforts of UN envoy Kofi Annan.

• Zebari said that such merge probably would bolster the pressures on the Syrian government and the opposition as well to implement peace plans that would end the current bloodshed in the country.

• Hoshyar Zebari added that the Syrian government approved the international plan to solve the crisis, but there is difference among the Syrian opposition parties which they have to unify their stances towards such a peace plan.

• Since the early stages of the Syrian crisis, Iraq refused to support punitive measures by the Arab League against neighboring Syria whose President Bashar al-Assad is carrying out a widely-condemned fierce military crackdown on protesters.

• However, Iraqi officials earlier said that their government’s attitude towards Syria is to keep hammering out peaceful solutions for the Syrian crisis that may preserve the aspirations of Syrian people to carry out democratic change away from external interference and sectarianism.

• It should be noted that Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government has close ties with Syrian President Assad, who is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
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