India, Brazil and South Africa (Ibsa) said they were launching a mission to Syria on Wednesday, in a bid to halt a deadly crackdown on anti-regime protests.
The governments of the three nations, under an initiative of the Ibsa forum of emerging economies, are seeking to help open a dialogue between Syrian authorities and the public to help bring months of brutal violence to an end, a Brazilian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Tuesday.
“The Brazilian representative is already in Damascus, where he awaits his counterparts,” and their meeting with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid Muallem, “should take place on Wednesday”, the official said.
South Africa’s foreign ministry confirmed on its website that it was “about to embark on a working visit to Syria, where we will join Brazil and India in a collective effort to further understand the situation, and to also communicate a message to the government of Syria.”
In New Delhi, an official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that India had sent an envoy to Syria who would meet with the violence-hit country’s foreign minister along with counterparts from Brazil and South Africa.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has dispatched Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad on a regional tour to discuss the crisis.
This week he was in South Africa, where he held talks with his counterpart Ebrahim Ebrahim, who called for an inclusive dialogue which “should seek to meet the genuine aspirations of the Syrians”.
On a three-day visit to India last week, Mekdad called on India not to give in to “Western propaganda” about its crackdown on protests and to help prevent a United Nations resolution.
Dilip Sinha, an additional secretary in the Indian foreign ministry, is in Damascus amid negotiations at the UN for a resolution condemning the deadly crackdown on protests by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
“Tomorrow they will meet with the foreign minister of Syria together,” Indian foreign ministry spokesperson Vishnu Prakash told AFP late on Tuesday.
The three nations are members of the so-called Brics group of emerging countries that also includes China and Russia. — AFP