More than two and a half years into the civil war devastating Syria, the United States and Russia are pushing the combatants to the negotiating table in Geneva, but on terms that mark a shift in favor of Bashar al-Assad against the increasingly fragmented rebels seeking to oust him.
Since the August 21 nerve gas attacks on rebel suburbs ringing Damascus, which brought the U.S. to the brink of a missile assault on Assad's forces, the diplomatic tide has turned against the opposition, which briefly believed external intervention would enable its forces to launch a final offensive.
Instead, the combination of hesitation by President Barack Obama's administration and an 11th hour deal brokered by Russia, a key Assad ally, to decommission Syria's chemical arsenal, has wrong-footed the rebels, now under intense U.S. and European pressure to attend talks in Geneva with a vague agenda.
Syrian opposition advisers and independent analysts fear this could channel the Syrian conflict - like other intractable regional problems such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - into a lengthy and fruitless process.
The only diplomatic landmark in this conflict, last June's U.N.-brokered statement known as Geneva I, was vague enough.
It called for a transitional government in a way that many assumed precluded any role for the Assad family, which has ruled Syria with an iron fist since President Assad's late father, Hafez, seized absolute power in 1970.
There has been barely a flicker of agreement within Syria about its future since the country erupted in initially peaceful protests in March 2011.
A source close to the internationally recognized political opposition, the National Coalition, says it fears the U.S.-Russia deal to dismantle Syria's chemical arsenal has restored the Assad administration's legitimacy, even as it uses tactics such as the starvation of rebel areas to try to regain control.
Source: Reuters
