UN-Arab special envoy meets Saudi King on Syrian crisis

UN-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria Lakhdar Brahimi on Friday met with Saudi Arabian King Abdullah Bin Abdelaziz Al Saud in Red Sea city of Jeddah and called for a political solution to the crisis in Syria, a UN spokesman told reporters here. Brahimi told the King that Syria's deplorable situation would not be resolved through military means, but rather through a political process that would meet the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people, said Martin Nesirky, spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, at the daily briefing. The two leaders "agreed on the dire need to stop the bloodshed and provide humanitarian aid," considering both the 2.5 million Syrians living inside the country affected by the fighting as well as the 348,000 refugees in neighboring Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon, said Nesirky. The two leaders also agreed that the situation "was deteriorating with each passing day, with untold suffering for the Syrian people," said the spokesperson. He added that Brahimi briefed both the Saudi King as well as Deputy Foreign Minister and Prince Abdelaziz Bin Abdullah on his consultations with the Syrian government and the opposition. Brahimi arrived in Jeddah, the second largest city of Saudi Arabia, on Wednesday on the first stop of his second regional tour aimed at finding a solution to the conflict in Syria after Damascus rejected a UN call to implement a unilateral ceasefire. More than 20,000 people, mostly civilians, have died since Syria has been plunged into a political crisis in March 2011, according to UN estimates.