Syrian Official Fired After Talks With U.S.

Updated Oct. 29, 2013 7:28 p.m. ETThe Syrian regime fired a senior official on Tuesday shortly after he disclosed that he met with a U.S. envoy for talks to prepare a proposed peace conference.
The meeting between American Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and Qadri Jamil, deputy prime minister for economic affairs, was a rare face-to-face encounter between senior officials from the two countries. The U.S. confirmed on Tuesday that they met over the weekend in Geneva.

Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil was fired after he met with U.S. officials in Europe. Reuters

Washington has called repeatedly for President Bashar al-Assad to step down and has supported elements of the opposition fighting to oust him. But State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the meeting doesn’t represent any shift in the U.S. stance.
“Our position on Assad and his legitimacy hasn’t changed,” she said.
U.S. officials said the Obama administration “does regularly meet with Syrians with direct ties to the leadership in Damascus.” Some Syrian businessmen close to the regime have in the past said they have had meetings with U.S. officials. Mr. Jamil, 61 years old, is among the most enthusiastic proponents of the peace conference, which is strongly backed by the U.S. as well as key Assad ally Russia.
Mr. Jamil was one of the few members of government who wasn’t a member of Syria’s ruling Baath Party. He joined the government along with another politician in June 2012 as representatives of the so-called internal peaceful opposition. It was seen at the time as an attempt by Mr. Assad to show his readiness for some reforms to help end the civil war that has killed more than 115,000.

Qadri Jamil speaks during an interview in Cairo on Aug. 22. AP

The official state news agency SANA said Mr. Jamil was fired for conducting meetings “outside the homeland without coordination with the government and overstepping institutional norms and the state’s overall structure.” It added that he was absent from government without consent at a time when he is most needed to help deal with the country’s economic crisis.
“There are no disputes,” Minister of Information Omran al-Zoubi said of the firing. “The whole matter is that he left the country and performed a political activity that’s more compatible with his partisan affiliation and political vision and not with his presence as a member of this government.”
Mr. Jamil, who was in Moscow on Tuesday, told a Lebanese television channel there are “no deep differences” with the regime and that he is returning to Syria shortly. He said leaving his government post frees him to focus on helping find a solution to end bloodshed.
On Monday, he made what one Damascus-based Syrian newspaper described as a “shocking revelation,” telling Russian media that he had met with State Department officials over the weekend in Geneva.
Several Syrian regime officials said the firing of Mr. Jamil, who bills himself as a regime opponent, was to free him to take a more active role in preparations for the peace conference as an opposition figure.
They said his meeting with Mr. Ford couldn’t have taken place without Mr. Assad’s knowledge and showed the president’s desire for some rapprochement with the U.S. ahead of the peace conference, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 23 in Geneva.
Mr. Assad made two conciliatory gestures toward the opposition one day before a planned meeting Wednesday with the United Nations–Arab League special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is in Damascus.
The president issued a decree pardoning all those who defected from the Syrian army or failed to perform mandatory military service on condition they “regularize their status” within 30 to 90 days.
Syrian forces also allowed about 500 women, children and elderly men to leave Moadhamiya, a rebel-held community southwest of Damascus that has been besieged by regime forces since April with no access to food and medicine.
The move followed widespread international condemnation of the situation there.
Syrian state media broadcast footage of Syrian aid workers distributing food to famished children or aiding elderly men and women streaming out with luggage and other belongings.
Another 3,000 people were allowed to leave Moadhamiya earlier this month. An estimated 8,000 civilians and rebels remain inside. Regime forces continue to besiege several rebel enclaves around Damascus and lifting the siege was one condition made last week by the Western-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition for attending the Geneva talks.
The coalition also wants any talks to be predicated on Mr. Assad giving up power while most rebels on the ground, particularly Islamists, completely reject any talks with the regime and have labeled all those who take part in the Geneva conference as “traitors.”
Mr. Jamil said there was complete agreement with the senior U.S. officials he met with in Geneva on the need to do everything to stop the war and convene peace talks.
The U.S. and Syria froze diplomatic ties in October 2011, when Ambassador Ford left Syria. But Mr. Jamil said he believed the U.S. position was shifting and becoming more realisitic.
“They understand the danger that a continuation of the bloodshed in Syria poses for the region and the whole world,” he told Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency in an interview on Monday, a day before he was fired.
The question of who will represent the Syrian opposition at the proposed peace conference came up during the talks, Mr. Jamil said.
“We expressed our point of view, which is that none of the main sides of the opposition can be excluded, and that all should be represented equally,” he said. “I think the Americans have made a positive shift in that direction. The fact that they met with us confirms it.”
Syria’s opposition is a collection of disparate groups that have failed to unite into a cohesive front despite persistent pressure to do so from Western backers. The fighting on the ground has become increasingly dominated by radical jihadist groups that the U.S. does not want to support.
Mr. Jamil said he doesn’t think the U.S. should be “hung up on” the idea that the exiled and Western-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition is the “only legitimate representative of Syria’s opposition.”
—Paul Sonne in Moscow contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com and Paul Sonne at paul.sonne@wsj.com

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