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The Annan Plan Will Bring More Violence
(Daily Star-Lebanon) Michael Young - The Syrian regime has accepted the Annan proposal, and one can immediately see why. It ensures that Assad will remain in office to bargain with the opposition in the "Syrian-led process." In that way, Annan has effectively undermined an Arab League plan demanding that the Syrian president step down and surrender power to his first vice president. Annan's plan also buys the Syrian security services more time to suffocate the uprising, since it will take weeks to bring all the machinery in place. We should have no illusions. Russia and China consider the Annan plan a formula for saving Bashar Assad, not getting rid of him. But Obama's focus is elsewhere. He prefers to subcontract Syria to regional states, even to the feckless Russians, so that he can pursue America's strategic reorientation away from the Middle East. The Syrian opposition will refuse to deal with their killer; those who do so will be marginalized. There will be war, all because no one dares show Bashar Assad the exit.