Assad offers dialogue, refuses ‘chaos’

Assad offers dialogue, refuses ‘chaos’

      

The president, Bashar al-Assad, said on Monday that dialogue could lead to a new constitution and even the end of his Baath party’s monopoly on power but refused to reform Syria under ‘chaos.’

        Pro-democracy activists said that the three-month-old ‘revolt’ must go on after president’s speech which they said only deepened the crisis.

        ‘We consider any dialogue useless that does not turn the page on the current regime,’ it said in a statement received by AFP.

         ‘We can say that national dialogue is the slogan of the next stage,’ Assad said. ‘The national dialogue could lead to amendments of the constitution or to a new constitution.’

        He insisted that a reform process in Syria was ‘a total commitment in the interest of the nation.’

        Offering his condolences to the families of ‘martyrs’ from the unrest rocking the country since mid-March, Assad said there could be ‘no development without stability, no reform in the face of sabotage and chaos.’

        ‘We make a distinction between those (with legitimate grievances) and the saboteurs who represent a small group which has tried to exploit the goodwill of the Syrian people for its own ends,’ said Assad.

        The Syrian leader’s third speech to the nation since the protests broke out, punctuated by applause from the invited audience, was buoyed by a Russian pledge to block Western moves against him at the United Nations.

         ‘The protesters condemned the speech which branded them as saboteurs, extremists ... The demonstrators are calling for freedom and dignity,’ the head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, said by telephone.

 ‘There were a lot of ideas in the speech. But the withdrawal of the army and security forces was not raised, which is not very reassuring and puts the emphasis on a military solution,’ said Hassan Abdel-Azim, a lawyer.