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Brahimi not confident Syria war can be ended

17 August 2012 23:45 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. New UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Friday he is not confident that he will be able to help bring an end to the Syria conflict, APA reports quoting AFP.

"I might very well fail but we sometimes are lucky and we can get a breakthrough," the former Algerian foreign minister told the BBC in an interview after being named to succeed Kofi Annan.

But Brahimi insisted that diplomatic efforts have to be pursued even though the 17-month-old conflict is worsening.

"These missions have to be undertaken. We have got to try. We have got to see that the Syrian people are not abandoned," he told the British broadcaster.

In an interview with the France 24 news channel, Brahimi was asked if he was confident the civil war could be ended.

"No I’m not," he replied. "What I am confident of is that I am going to try my utmost, my very very best."

He said, "I hope that I will find cooperation from the Syrians at the beginning and also support from the so-called international community."

Brahimi echoed Annan’s demands that the UN Security Council unite behind his efforts to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end the conflict and start talks on a political transition.

He said he would be in New York soon for talks with the Security Council members and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

"We are going to discuss very, very seriously how they can help," Brahimi told France 24. "They are asking me to do this job. If they don’t support me, there is no job so I am looking forward to discussing with them."

"They are divided but surely they can unite on something like this and I hope they will," he said.

Brahimi is a former Algerian foreign minister and was also a UN envoy to Afghanistan and Iraq.