Annan Meets Syria’s Mufti and Representatives of Religious Sects in Syria
U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan (L) meets Grand Mufti of Syria Ahmed Hassoun and Orthodox Patriarch Hazim (R) during a meeting with clerics in Damascus March 11, 2012.
Syrian Grand Mufti Ahmed Hassun (2nd R) introduces UN-Arab League envoy for Syria Kofi Annan to other religious figures in Damascus on March 11, 2012. Former UN chief Kofi Annan was set to hold a second round of talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on his mission to end a year of bloodshed, after the army stormed a rebel stronghold.
12/3/2012
DAMASCUS, (SANA) – The UN Envoy to Syria Kofi Annan said his mission is aimed at discussing steps that might help in ending the violence, ensuring the access of humanitarian aid and starting political dialogue in Syria.
Meeting Grand Mufti of the Syrian Arab Republic Ahmad Badr EddinHassoun and representatives of the religious sects in Syria, Annan hoped he would help achieve what could contribute to making democratic reforms and enhancing respect of human rights in Syria.
Annan wished for Syria to be secure and to invest the plurality in it to enhance reconciliation and tolerance and circulate them at the mosques and churches and across all the sects.
He said that he spoke with the Security Council’s members, the EU ambassadors and a number of officials and opinion leaders in the world and called on them to cooperate to ensure peace in Syria.
The UN envoy said that he met President Bashar al-Assad and some opposition figures, traders, businessmen and people from all spectrums of the Syrian society yesterday and found that everybody want a solution and a compromise.
Annan stressed that the Syrians alone are able to solve their problems and that his mission is to help them do so.
For his part, Mufti Hassoun called upon those who carry weapons and claim “peacefulness” to resort to dialogue, adding that those who have taken up weapons to sabotage their homeland in service of foreign agendas are not Syrian, because Syria has always been the country of co-existence where there is no difference between a Christian and a Muslim.
In turn, His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV (Hazim) of Antioch and all the East said that the lies and fabrications propagated by the instigative channels about the situation of Christians in Syria are untrue and mere illusions in the minds of some Europeans.
“In Syria, we, Muslims and Christians, live as brothers and share everything,” His Beatitude added, wishing Annan success in his mission and stressing to work with him to help him achieve this.
R. Raslan/H. Said
