Syrians decide shape of transitional period

The visiting UN-Arab League joint special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, said here Tuesday that the Syrians are the ones who decide the shape of the transitional period in their country. Brahimi made the remarks a day after an Arab newspaper misquoted him when speaking about the role of President Bashar al- Assad in the transitional period in Syria. "What was published in the Arabic newspapers was not accurate and the translation was not accurate," Brahimi said, stressing that "we are preparing for Geneva conference and Geneva conference is basically a meeting between the Syrian parties, and the Syrian parties are the ones who are going to identify the transitional period and the post-transitional period, not me." Brahimi flew in a day earlier to meet with top Syrian officials and opposition groups regarding the upcoming international conference on Syria planned to convene in Geneva by the end of November. The conference is designed to bring the opposition and the government around the negotiation table to hammer out a political solution to the country's long-standing crisis. On Tuesday, Brahimi met with a number of opposition parties' leaders, mainly the National Coordination Body (NCB). Rajaa al-Nasser, a leading member of the NCB, said "We have exchanged views about the snugs that are facing the commencement of the conference and the circumstances surrounding it, the necessary and needed steps and our vision regarding the current developments." Regarding the shape of the opposition participation, whether it 's going to be represented in one delegation or in separate ones, al-Nasser said if the opposition parties agree on a political solution based on negotiations, his group would take part in a unified opposition delegation. He also stressed that there was no way his group could participate under the umbrella of the broad-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC), a Western-backed group advocating the military means to bring down the Assad administration. Source: XINHUA