DAMASCUS: Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said on Wednesday that Damascus was ready to cooperate with a Chinese initiative to end the bloodshed and begin dialogue between the regime and the opposition.
After meeting Chinese envoy Li Huaxin, Beijing's former ambassador to Damascus, Muallem said Syria welcomed a six-point peace plan and was “ready to cooperate” with the plan aimed at “halting the violence,” the official SANA news agency reported.
Damascus was also ready to “cooperate with the envoy of the United Nations” and the Arab League, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who is due in Syria on Saturday, the minister added.
Li Huaxin, quoted earlier in Al-Watan newspaper, said he had already met Deputy Foreign Minister Ahmad Arnus to discuss China's “six-point vision” on the year-long crisis in Syria.
The Chinese initiative, unveiled by Beijing on Sunday, calls for an immediate end to the violence and for dialogue between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition.
Syria's main opposition alliance has previously ruled out dialogue while Assad remains in power.
Beijing's proposal rejects foreign interference or “external action for regime change” in Syria but supports the role of the UN Security Council “in strict accordance with the purposes and principles of the UN charter.” Li is expected to meet representatives of opposition groups headed by Hassan Abdel Azim of the National Committee for Democratic Change, Luay Hussein and Kadri Jamil, according to Al-Watan.
China and Russia have been widely criticised for vetoing two UN Security Council resolutions condemning Syria's bloody crackdown on 12 months of anti-regime protests.
A Britain-based monitoring group said on Wednesday that death toll since the protests erupted last March had topped 8,400.
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