Lakhdar Brahimi, Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for Syria, speaks with the media at United Nations headquarters in Nov.(Photo: Richard Drew, AP)
BEIRUT (AP) - The international envoy tasked with pushing to end
Syria's civil war said he was worried after discussing the crisis with
President Bashar Assad on Monday, indicating there had been no apparent
progress in efforts to achieve a negotiated solution to the conflict.
In
brief comments to reporters after meeting the Syrian leader at the
presidential palace in Damascus, Lakhdar Brahimi said he and Assad
exchanged views on the conflict and discussed possible steps forward,
which he did not disclose.
"The situation in Syria is still
worrying and we hope that all the parties will go toward the solution
that the Syrian people are hoping for and look forward to," Brahimi
said.
Assad did not comment.
The two met just hours after a
government airstrike on a bakery in a rebel-held town in central Syria
killed more than 60 people late on Sunday, according to activists.
Brahimi
has apparently made little progress toward brokering an end to the
conflict since starting his job in September, mostly because both sides
adamantly refuse to talk to each other.
The government describes
the rebels as foreign-backed terrorists set on destroying the country.
The opposition says that forces under Assad's command have killed too
many people for him to be part of any solution.
Brahimi's two-day
visit was to end later Monday. It is his third to Damascus as an envoy
of the United Nations and the Arab League.
The security situation
in Damascus and elsewhere in the country has declined since Brahimi's
previous visits. Instead of flying in to the Damascus International
Airport as he did on earlier visits, Brahimi drove to Damascus over land
from Beirut because of the fighting near the Syrian capital's airport.
Reports
by anti-regime activists of the airstrike Sunday on a bakery in the
central town of Halfaya that killed scores of people also cast pall over
Brahimi's visit.
Amateur videos posted online showed the bodies of many dead and wounded scattered in a street.
On
Monday, Syria's state news service blamed the attack on "an armed
terrorist group" - its shorthand for the rebels - accusing them of
filming the aftermath to "frame the Syrian army."
In the videos, however, armed rebels are clearly among those tending to the dead and wounded.
Anti-regime activists say the civil war has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.
Associated Press