[zonbron]

Assad heeft goede bedoelingen. Hij wil ook dat de uitgeweken burgers terug naar zijn land komen.

Syria's turmoil
Wooing the middle
The president is belatedly trying to convince his people that he means well

Jun 23rd 2011 | DAMASCUS | from the print edition

A SWATHE of undecided Syrians in the middle ground are being wooed both by protesters who want to bring President Bashar Assad down and by purported reformers in the regime who want to prop him up. On June 20th Mr Assad made a bid for support with his third public speech since the crisis started three months ago, his first in two months. It was not a success. The protests—and the deaths—show no sign of letting up.

Mr Assad acknowledged that some of the protesters were peaceful, offered a “national dialogue”, promised yet again to enact reforms and talked of “making an amnesty more comprehensive”. But he also made a string of fanciful claims that alienated sceptics all the more. He said he cherished “the love…of those who represent most of Syria’s people.” The unrest, he said, was the result of a conspiracy carried out by criminals and extremists that was spreading like a “germ”.

On a more emollient note, he pledged to create a committee to look at ways of amending the constitution. He promised a law to regulate political parties, but made no mention of the role of his ruling Baath party as the sole arbiter of politics and social life. A new election, he said, would be held in August, but he offered no indication that it would be a more open affair than usual.
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He acknowledged that both civilians and soldiers had died as a result of the unrest, but he did not concede that his security services had been mainly to blame. At least 1,400 Syrians are reckoned to have died so far; some say several hundred members of the security forces have also been killed. “We were surprised that [the protesters] have modern four-wheel-drive vehicles on which they had installed sophisticated weapons capable of dealing with helicopters,” the president claimed, with no independent evidence.

He called for Syrians who have fled to Turkey, now numbering more than 10,000, to come home. “We cannot talk about normal life and economic life while there are people who have left their towns and villages,” he said. There would be no revenge, he promised, yet arrests and shootings were being reported even as he spoke.

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economist