{"id":15503,"date":"2013-01-09T10:59:23","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T17:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=15503"},"modified":"2013-01-09T10:58:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T17:58:31","slug":"al-qaeda-closer-to-establishing-chemical-weapons-state-as-saudia-arabia-egypt-call-for-assad-to-quit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=15503","title":{"rendered":"al-Qaeda closer to establishing Chemical Weapons State as Saudi Arabia, Egypt call for Assad to Quit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saudi Arabia, Egypt Call for Peaceful Handover in Syria<\/strong>
\nBy Maher Chmaytelli, Carter Dougherty – 5 January, 2013 – Bloomberg<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia and Egypt yesterday called for a \u201cpeaceful handover\u201d of power in Syria, signaling closer cooperation as violence mounts with more than 60,000 people reported killed since the protests against President Bashar al-Assad began nearly two years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cA peaceful exit is an Arab and international demand,\u201d Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal told reporters yesterday in Riyadh after talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Mohamed Kamel Amr. \u201cIt is up to the Syrian people to decide the conditions of the exit from power\u201d of Assad.<\/p>\n

Amr called for \u201cstepping up the efforts to achieve a peaceful handover of power.\u201d Assad will address his nation today to discuss developments in the region, according to Syrian state television.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia, the largest Arab economy, and Egypt, the most populous Arab state, for the first time made a joint call for Assad to step down, signaling closer cooperation on the Syrian situation, Khalid al-Dakhil, a professor of political studies at King Saud University in Riyadh, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey see how important the fall of the Syrian regime is on an Arab and regional level,\u201d he said in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia stayed away from a foreign ministers\u2019 meeting on Syria held in September in Cairo at the invitation of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, with the participation of Shiite Iran, which supports Assad, a member of the Alawite sect affliated with Shiite Islam, and Turkey, which supports the rebellion. Participants failed to agree on a compromise.
\nRegion\u2019s Future<\/p>\n

With the future of the Assad regime in doubt, analysts have begun contemplating how his fall might affect a region upended by the two years of uprisings — some democratic and peaceful, others violent — referred to as the Arab Spring.<\/p>\n

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a professor at Princeton University and former U.S. State Department official, predicted that Syria would \u201csplit into multiple regions\u201d and that, even if Assad falls, there won\u2019t be a government to replace him by the end of this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to have a Kurdish autonomous zone in Syria that is going to create major trouble for Turkey,\u201d Slaughter said in taped remarks on CNN\u2019s \u201cFareed Zakaria GPS\u201d program scheduled for broadcast today. Turkey has a substantial population that is ethnically Kurdish.<\/p>\n

The refugee flow from the Syrian civil war is \u201calready starting to destabilize Jordan just in terms of inability to cope,\u201d Slaughter said. Lebanon faces Syrian-inspired conflict between Assad\u2019s Alawites and Sunni Muslims, she said. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Saudi Arabia, Egypt Call for Peaceful Handover in Syria By Maher Chmaytelli, Carter Dougherty – 5 January, 2013 – Bloomberg Saudi Arabia and Egypt yesterday called for a \u201cpeaceful handover\u201d of power in Syria, signaling closer cooperation as violence mounts with more than 60,000 people reported killed since the protests against President Bashar al-Assad began more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2000],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15503"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15513,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15503\/revisions\/15513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}