China urges visiting Syria envoy to end violence

China's Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi urged a visiting Syrian envoy on Thursday to implement a ceasefire and accept international mediation to end the violence wracking the country.

"China urges the Syrian government and all concerned parties... to quickly implement a ceasefire to end the violence and start political dialogue," Yang told Bouthaina Shaaban, according to a foreign ministry statement.

Yang added that China "hopes the Syrian government and the opposition can cooperate with international mediation efforts", it said.

China has repeatedly called for political dialogue and efforts by the United Nations to resolve the crisis in Syria.

But China has also joined Russia to repeatedly use their vetoes to scuttle UN Security Council resolutions aimed at tackling the deadly conflict, putting them at odds with fellow permanent members like the United States.

Shaaban, who arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, said President Bashar al-Assad's regime was willing to cooperate with international mediation efforts and raised the possibility of dialogue with the opposition.

"The Syrian government will cooperate with international mediation efforts to seek a way to end violence and with the opposition launch inclusive dialogue with broad participation of all parties," she was quoted as saying.

But in an interview with the state-run China Daily newspaper published Thursday, Shaaban slammed Western nations for supplying arms and money to "people who are inciting the civil war in Syria".

She dismissed the opposition as armed groups, kidnappers and tools of foreign powers that refused to engage in dialogue with the government.

Shaaban also told the newspaper that Syria was happy to deal with Beijing and Moscow.

"We're happy to see countries like China and Russia, who are not colonisers or deal with people like colonisers," she was quoted as saying, adding this is "a very different stance from the West".

She denied that Syria was blocking international aid groups from entering the country, saying instead they had not offered any supplies despite requests from the government.

Her visit to China comes as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation said it was suspending Syria, underscoring the growing isolation of Assad's embattled regime.

During her visit to Beijing, Shaaban would likely seek to clarify the extent of Chinese support for the government, amid reports that the Assad regime's grip was weakening, an analyst said.

China in turn would want a clearer sense of the situation in Syria, including how much control the regime had, Michael Stephens, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in Qatar, told AFP.

"Support (from China) will go on no matter what. It's just finding out what shape it takes," Stephens said. "Both sides need to know what the endgame will look like."

The United States has urged Beijing to use its influence on the regime in Damascus to press for an end to the bloodshed, with the 17-month conflict showing no signs of abating.

Western nations have sought to pressure Syria to implement a six-point peace plan drafted by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who resigned this month in the face of continued violence and a deadlock among world powers.

But Beijing, which has said it would be open to meeting Syria's opposition, is deeply uncomfortable with what it sees as Western intervention in other countries' internal affairs.

More than 23,000 people have died in the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates, while the UN says another million people have been displaced and 140,000 fled to neighbouring countries.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/china-urges-visiting-syria-envoy-end-violence-161109719.html

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