Envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi is seeking help from Russia to get the warring parties to negotiate. Source: AAP
INTERNATIONAL envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has called for "real change" in war-torn Syria including a transitional government with full powers until elections can be held.
The envoy unveiled his initiative in Damascus on Thursday as Russia, the Syrian government's most powerful ally, denied the existence of a joint peace plan with the United States, amid a flurry of end-of-year diplomatic activity on the crisis.
"Change should not be cosmetic; the Syrian people need and require real change, and everyone understands that," the UN-Arab League envoy said on the fifth day of his latest peace mission to Syria.
"We need to form a government with all powers... which assumes power during a period of transition. That transition period will end with elections," Brahimi told reporters.
He did not specify a date for the proposed elections. Syria elected a parliament in May and President Bashar al-Assad's current term expires in 2014.
"The transition period should not lead to the collapse of the state and its institutions," Brahimi said, adding that the initiative was incomplete.
"We prefer... a project whose facilitation the parties have agreed upon, and, if they do not, the last solution is going to the (UN) Security Council which will make a binding resolution."
Brahimi, who has held talks with Assad as well as with opposition groups tolerated by the regime, replaced former UN chief Kofi Annan after his dramatic resignation in August over what he said was the failure of major powers to back his peace plan.
A diplomat at the UN Security Council said Brahimi, the veteran Algerian troubleshooter, had received no support from either side since arriving in Syria on Sunday.
"Assad appears to have stonewalled Brahimi again, the UN Security Council is not even close to showing the envoy the kind of support he needs and the rebels will not now compromise," said the diplomat.
Brahimi will hold talks on Saturday with Moscow, Russia's foreign ministry said.
Russia on Thursday hosted a Syrian delegation led by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Muqdad.
"This is of course a part of the efforts we are undertaking to encourage dialogue not just with the government but all opposition forces," Russian spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
Moscow has refused to end its co-operation with the Assad regime during the conflict, despite the fury of the West.
The diplomatic drive comes as Western media report about a new Russia-US initiative that would see Assad stay in power until 2014 but prevent him from renewing his mandate.
Lukashevich vehemently denies any such plan.
"There was not and is not such a plan and it is not being discussed," he said.
Russia insists it will not prop up Assad's regime but it will not seek to persuade the Syrian president to step down, saying it is up to the Syrian people to decide the country's future.
The diplomatic drive comes after the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented at least 45,000 deaths in the civil war, which erupted in March 2011 following a brutal crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests.
The Observatory said the real number of those killed could be as high as 100,000, with both sides concealing many casualties.
The grim statistics add gravity to a UN warning that the humanitarian situation is rapidly deteriorating.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees "estimates that if fighting in Syria continues, the refugee figure could reach 1.1 million by June 2013," a report said.
That is double the current number of those registered by the United Nations.
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