Clinton addresses Syrian crisis resolution after Geneva meeting

There are no guarantees that the international plan agreed upon in Geneva for a transitional period in Syria is going to succeed, said US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, stressing in return that President Bashar al-Assad will not be part of any future solution to the Syrian crisis. In an interview with the CNN aired by Radio SAWA Monday morning, Clinton explained: "There’s no guarantee that we’re going to be successful. I just hate to say that, because it’s the fact." The US Secretary of State asserted that the Syrian president and his circle cannot be included in a transitional government. "There is no way anyone in the opposition would ever consent to Assad or his inside regime cronies with blood on their hands being on any transitional governing body," she indicated. "What was important is that we were on a path with an empowered Special Envoy with the full support of all the P-5 members, including Russia and China, with an approach that absolutely guarantees, if there is a transition that is still the hard work ahead, Assad will not be part of it," she added. "One of the points that became clear, both in my long conversations with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last night in St. Petersburg and then in our larger group today, they have committed to trying, but they’ve also admitted that they may or may not have enough leverage to convince not just one man but a family and a regime that their time is over," Clinton added. The US official did not deny complications: "We’ve had lots of experience in this. I mean, we just went through more than a year with Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen, and he kept saying he would go, then he wouldn’t go. And people just kept bearing down and pushing forward and eventually were successful." Clinton pointed out the importance of the Geneva meeting: "Until today, we did not have the kind of roadmap in specifics, with concrete actions, that you could telegraph to Damascus, where I believe they are shocked that Russia and China have signed onto this agreement, which so clearly says goodbye to them in this transition."