IN its hour of need – with Syria resisting massively the attempt at ‘regime change’ organised by the US-UK-Turkey axis, and carried out by their Islamist and Al-Qaeda foot soldiers – the imperialist powers have turned to the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow to see if it can rescue it from a disastrous defeat.
The Israeli blitz on the suburbs of Damascus has electrified the entire Middle East. Even the Turkish Premier, Erdogan was forced to condemn it, because the attack concentrated the minds of the Arab masses from Morocco to the Gulf, as well as the Turkish people itself, on the indisputable fact that imperialism and its Zionist entity is their enemy, and a defeat for Syria is a defeat for them, and a victory for their enemies.
In this situation Syria, bravely standing fast, has emerged out of the onslaught stronger, and not only Syria. After the attack the Palestinian masses are much more determined in their opposition to swapping the fertile Jordan Valley, and the other Israeli settled areas, for chunks of the Negev Desert, and to handing over Jerusalem to Israel.
The Palestinian masses know that the destruction of Syria and the installation of a pro-imperialist Islamist regime will be a death sentence for Palestine.
Therefore, on the brink of a new major war in the Middle East, whose outcome and scope, as far as the imperialist powers are concerned, is uncertain, along with the ‘danger’ of it igniting a number of new revolutions throughout the region, the US has decided to turn to the Stalinist bureaucracy in Moscow. It intends to see if it can be persuaded to resume the kind of conduct that allowed the imperialist powers to openly assault Libya and murder Colonel Gadaffi.
After all night talks with Putin, it has been agreed that the US and Russia will set up an international conference on Syria by the end of this month, that will include representatives of the Syrian government and opposition, US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday.
The conference will be aimed at facilitating a solution to the Syrian crisis through political dialogue, Kerry said at a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.
The Syrian government has assured Russia it is ready to participate in the conference, Lavrov said.
The conference will be a follow-up to last year’s international meeting in Geneva that drafted a peace roadmap for Syria, Lavrov said.
The communiqué passed in Geneva by the UN Action Group on Syria, which includes Syria’s neighbours and permanent members of UN Security Council, proposed to start with the creation of a transitional government comprising representatives of the opposition and Assad’s regime.
Both Kerry and Lavrov stressed that Russia and the United States support the Geneva roadmap.
Lavrov said they agreed on the need to hold ‘as soon as possible’ an international conference on Syria to convince both ‘rebels’ and the regime to accept the terms of the Geneva accord agreed by world powers last June.
The Geneva agreement set out a path towards a transitional government without President Bashar al-Assad.
Kerry said of the coming conference: ‘Its specific work will be to bring members of the government and the opposition together to see how we can implement the language of the communique.’
Lavrov added that the United States and Russia were ready to use all their capacities to bring ‘the government and opposition to the negotiating table’, then referring to Assad he remarked that while the departure of President Assad should not be a condition for peace talks, ‘We are not concerned by the fate of any individual. We are concerned by the fate of the Syrian people.’
Putin and Lavrov up till now have maintained that the US was a ‘partner’, although there was not yet the desired ‘strategic partnership’.
Now in return for guarantees that its current access to a ‘new’ Syria will remain, the Stalinist bureaucracy is willing to play its part in retiring Assad and the group around him, to impose a regime, no doubt prepared to sign a peace treaty with Israel, and sell out a Palestinian state.
The Syrian and Arab masses will reject such an arrangement, and defeat any attempt to impose it.
