U.N. Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon is planning to ask his predecessor, Kofi Annan, to serve as
his new U.N. envoy to Syria, turning to a high-profile diplomat with extensive
experience in the region, and a history of dealings with President Bashar
al-Assad, to help halt the spiraling violence in Syria.
If he accepts, it would be
Annan's first major diplomatic troubleshooting effort since 2008, when he led an
African Union mediation effort aimed at ending a post-election civil war in
Kenya. Annan received international plaudits for his success in persuading the
Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga to form a coalition
government.
A Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
Annan earned a reputation as a forceful proponent of human rights, promoting
the doctrine that states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens,
and building up the U.N.'s institutional capacity to monitor rights violations
in peacekeeping missions. But he is also associated with some of the U.N.'s
greatest human rights failures, including leading the U.N. peacekeeper
department at a time when the U.N. failed to intervene to halt mass atrocities
in Srebrenica and Rwanda.
The U.N. General Assembly
adopted a resolution last week condemning Syria's violent crackdown on
anti-government demonstrators and asking the United Nations chief to appoint a
special envoy to support an Arab League initiative for a political transition
in Syria to a government of national unity.
Ban will be in London tomorrow, but is expected to announce
the new appointment as a high-level diplomatic meeting takes place in Tunis, where
top Western and Arab diplomats, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are set to discuss
Syria's future. The selection of Annan sends "a clear message that this is at
the top of the international communities agenda," said one council diplomat.
"He's clearly a politica heavyweight."
Follow
me on Twitter @columlynch
Read More
(1)
HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE