Warplanes hit Damascus as efforts to end crisis founder

A fighter from the Free Syrian Army’s Tahrir al Sham brigade uses a shotgun to fire an improvised grenade at Syrian soldiers in the Arabeen neigbourhood of Damascus yesterday.AFP/DamascusPresident Bashar al-Assad reshuffled his cabinet yesterday as regime warplanes raided rebel areas in a bid to end the stalemate in Syria’s deadly civil war and hopes for a political solution appeared to founder. Syria is in the depths of an unprecedented economic recession because of the violence gripping the country for nearly two years, and the latest government reshuffle focused on finance and social affairs portfolios. The World Bank says the country’s gross domestic product has shrunk by 20%, and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) puts unemployment at 37% and possibly hitting 50% by the end of 2013. Assad changed seven ministers, the official Sana news agency reported. It said he split the ministry of labour and social affairs into two, and brought in a woman, Kinda Shmat, to head the latter. Hassan Hijazi becomes labour minister. Ismail Ismail becomes finance minister and Sleiman Abbas takes the oil and mineral resources portfolio. The housing and urban development, agriculture and public works ministers also changed. Assad has announced several reshuffles since the uprising against his rule began, the most recent in August 2012. Efforts towards finding a political solution to the conflict, which the UN says has killed more than 60,000 people, appeared to be deadlocked, hours after Damascus offered talks without preconditions. The opposition has demanded Assad’s departure be the focus of any talks. Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi said on state television late on Friday that the regime was prepared to have talks with its political foes so long as they set no preconditions. “The door is open, the negotiating table is there, welcome to any Syrian who wants to have dialogue with us,” he said. “When you speak of dialogue, it means dialogue without conditions, which excludes no one... There must be no preconditions.” The opposition Syrian National Coalition said on February 1, the day after an offer of dialogue by its leader Moaz al-Khatib, that any talks on the country’s political future must be about the departure of the Assad regime. New US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday in his first news conference since taking up the post that Washington was weighing its next steps on Syria. “We are evaluating now, we are taking a look at what steps, if any, diplomatic particularly, might be able to be taken in an effort to reduce that violence and deal with that situation,” Kerry said. In the latest fighting, air raids yesterday hit northern and eastern areas outlying the capital, amid fighting between loyalist troops and insurgents, a watchdog said. Warplanes also hit the town of Sabineh south of Damascus, and fierce clashes broke out between rebels and troops in the embattled town of Daraya, where the army shelled insurgent positions, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The army this week launched a major offensive against rebel zones surrounding the capital, in a drive to break the stalemate in the uprising. Pro-regime newspaper Al Watan said the army was “determined to crush terrorism around the capital and in big cities”. In the north, rebels stormed parts of Menegh airbase less than 25km from the Turkish border in Aleppo province, the Observatory said. The Observatory said at least 15 people were killed yesterday a day after it reported 136 deaths in violence nationwide. lMaronite Patriarch Beshara Rai arrived in Syria yesterday from neighbouring Lebanon on a key visit and said the country must make reforms but that these should not be imposed from outside. His visit is the first by a Maronite patriarch since Syrian and Lebanese independence in 1943. The patriarch’s trip is officially to attend the enthronement today of Greek Orthodox leader Yuhanna X Yazigi at the Church of the Holy Cross in Qassaa, a central neighbourhood of the capital. Patriarch Rai entered the Maronite cathedral in Damascus’s Old City to warm applause, state television showed. “We are here in solidarity with all the people who are suffering in Syria,” Rai told AFP at Saint Anthony’s Cathedral in the Christian district of Bab Tuma. “We pray each day for the end of war and violence and that a unanimous peace may be achieved through co-operation.” In a sermon, the patriarch said: “Reforms are necessary, but should not be imposed from the outside. They must come from within through dialogue and agreement.”