Peace Envoy Brahimi to Brief Arab League Chief on Syria Trip
The international peace envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, was to hold talks in Cairo on Monday with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi following his trip to Damascus, the organisation said on Monday.
"Brahimi will brief Arabi on his visit to Syria and his meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad and members of the opposition there," an Arab League official said.
The U.N.-Arab League envoy and Arabi will discuss "the Arab and international moves required to resolve the current crisis in Syria," the official said.
The veteran Algerian diplomat, who left Damascus on Sunday, warned after a meeting with Assad that the worsening conflict in Syria threatens both the region and the world at large.
"The crisis is dangerous and getting worse, and it is a threat to the Syrian people, the region and the world," said Brahimi, who replaced Kofi Annan following the failure of the former U.N. chief's six-point peace plan.
As Brahimi left Damascus, a rebel commander who had an Internet conference call with the envoy on Sunday said his mission was doomed to fail.
"We are sure Brahimi will fail like the other envoys before him, but we do not want to be the reason of his failure," the Free Syrian Army chief for Aleppo province in north Syria, Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, told Agence France Presse.
According to the Iranian Fars news agency, Brahimi is also expected to attend part of a meeting of foreign ministers of a Syria "contact group" in Cairo. The group includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey.
The meetings come as the head of a U.N. commission tasked with probing abuses in Syria said that serious human rights violations have soared in recent weeks.
"Gross violations of human rights have grown in number, in pace and in scale," Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian who heads the United Nations' Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, told diplomats gathered in Geneva.
Source: Agence France Presse
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