Russia to discuss post-Al Assad Syria on Friday

As Syria slides toward civil war, Russia is signalling that it no longer views President Bashar Al Assad’s position as tenable and is working with the US to seek an orderly transition. A US delegation headed by Fred Hof, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser on Syria, is scheduled to meet with Russian counterparts on Friday in Moscow. They will try to forge a common approach to moving Al Assad aside — or even out of the country — with a goal of replacing him with someone acceptable to both sides in the conflict, according to two US officials speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Meanwhile, France on Wednesday denounced President Bashar Al Assad’s appointment of a new prime minister as a “masquerade” that does not meet the demands of the Syrian people or the international community. Al Assad appointed agriculture minister Riad Hijab as premier on Wednesday, after Syria’s new parliament was elected on May 7 in a vote boycotted by opposition groups and dismissed by Washington as a “farce”. On the ground, activists said army helicopters and tanks attacked rebel positions in the coastal province of Latakia for a second day on Wednesday, in the heaviest clashes there since the revolt against Al Assad erupted in March last year. In Lebanon, clashes broke out Wednesday between Syrian troops and residents of the border town of Arsal in eastern Lebanon after a Lebanese man was killed and three wounded at dawn, a security source said. The source said that rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons were fired during the clashes at Khirbet Daoud, on the outskirts of Arsal. A local official said on condition of anonymity the fighting erupted just outside the town, in a mountainous border area, after a man was killed and three wounded by Syrian troops in Arsal itself.