BEIRUT, January 6 (Itar-Tass) - President of Syria Bashar al-Assad on Sunday will deliver a speech in Damascus in which he is expected to put forward an initiative for a peaceful settlement of the internal crisis. The SANA news agency reported that the president in his speech will dwell on “the latest developments in Syria and in the Middle East.”
According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, the president will present a plan for “a ceasefire, the observance of which will be monitored by the UN observers.” Assad will agree to the formation of a commission for drafting a new constitution and a government of national unity that will hold “free parliamentary elections under international supervision,” specified the publication.
The Syrian leader is not going to leave his post and is going to run for the presidency in 2014. Supported by the West, Turkey and the Arab oil monarchies, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces believes that Assad’s resignation is “a preliminary condition to any political deal.” The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces whose leaders are in exile in Cairo, Istanbul, Doha and Paris, is uncompromising and refuses to conduct a dialogue with the Government of Syria. In December last year at a meeting of the Friends of Syria the coalition was recognised “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”
The leaders of the legally acting in Damascus internal opposition “are ready to compromise for the sake of the earliest stopping of the bloodshed.”