Annan: Iran could help remove Assad

Iran and other nations could create plan to ease Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, special envoy Kofi Annan was to tell U.N. Security Council Thursday. Annan, a joint U.N.-Arab League envoy, has been in talks with Western and Arab officials about establishing a group of world and regional powers, including Syrian allies Russia and Iran, to discuss the political removal of Assad, people familiar with Annan\'s mission told The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations. Annan was to discuss the idea with U.N. member states when he briefs the Security Council in a special session, the people said. The session was to be chaired by Chinese U.N. Ambassador Li Baodong, whose country is the Security Council president this month. Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/06/07/Annan-Iran-could-help-remove-Assad/UPI-26651339050600/#ixzz1x62UNEwF China is also an Assad supporter. Annan is to discuss his proposal with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington Friday. The proposal would create the first multilateral discussions on a leadership transition mechanism in Syria since the bloody conflict began 15 months ago. Annan\'s effort follows a six-point peace plan he created for Syria that has been all but ignored. The United Nations says more than 10,000 people have been killed by Assad forces trying to stamp out opposition to the Assad regime. Activists reported Wednesday a mass killing of 78 people in a village in the west-central Syrian province of Hama, north of Damascus, the capital. The reports said half the dead in the village of Qubeir were women and children, including 35 members of one family. Many of the women and children were executed -- some were burned and stabbed, the reports said. The reports could not be independently confirmed. U.N. monitors in Syria were not able to gain immediate access to the site. The activist accounts were similar to those describing a close-range massacre of 108 people -- mostly women and children -- in the Houla agriculture area of western Syria northwest of Homs May 25. The United Nations attributed that massacre, which sparked an international outcry, to Assad security forces and pro-Assad mercenary militia known as \"Shabiha.\" The killings Wednesday were reported as representatives of more than 55 countries seeking Assad\'s resignation threatened to sharply expand their financial pressure on his regime. \"Strong sanctions, effectively implemented, aggressively enforced, can help deprive the Syrian regime of the resources it needs to sustain itself and to continue its repression of the Syrian people,\" U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said at a Friends of the Syrian People working group meeting in Washington sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department. Clinton was in Turkey, an outspoken critic of Syria, for further talks on working out a way of removing Assad and ending the Syria crisis. State Department special Middle East envoy Fred Hof was to fly to Moscow Thursday to assess whether Russia and the United States could achieve a common vision on a post-Assad political transition in Syria, The New York Times reported. Russia, which supplies weapons to Syria, said this week it was open to seeing Assad removed from power at the end of a political process. Clinton Wednesday dismissed a Russian proposal for a global meeting on Syria that would include Iran. It is \"a little hard to imagine inviting a country that is stage-managing the Assad regime\'s assault on its people,\" she said. She said she would discuss \"next steps\" with Annan in their meeting Friday, \"including our shared efforts to encourage Russia and China to use their influence to end the bloodshed and work with the international community in promoting a transition.\" Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/06/07/Annan-Iran-could-help-remove-Assad/UPI-26651339050600/#ixzz1x62e54DF