Syrian peace activist urges SA to use its experience to broker peace in the war-torn country
MELROSE ARCH - Syrian peace activist calls on South Africa to use its peace-broking skills to get warring parties in his country to a negotiating table.
South Africa has been urged to use its international diplomatic clout as a ‘miracle peace project’ that overcame all odds to become one of the world’s most dynamic democracies and help achieve lasting peace in Syria and the Middle East region.
The plea came from peace activist Issam Zeitoun of the Golan Peace Initiative when he addressed a press conference at the Fire and Ice Hotel in Melrose Arch as a guest of the South Jewish Board of Deputies.
While in the country, Zeitoun, an independent researcher and opposition political figure in war-torn Syria, will be meeting with academic figures and refugee bodies to share the refugee crisis in his country and a possible way forward out of the current political quagmire and close to a decade-old civil war that claimed many civilian lives.
Asked what role he thought South Africa could play in the ongoing conflict in his home country, Zeitoun, a harsh critic of the Syrian President Bashar Hafez al-Assad, said this country can play a major role in getting all parties that are currently at each other’s throats to sit at a round table and map the way for peaceful resolution of the strife.
“Having achieved one of the most talked-about peace projects internationally, South Africa can have an immense bearing on warring parties to come to the table and peacefully resolve their differences without emancipating the entire civilian population of Syria.
“South Africa can use its vast knowledge and experience in bringing formers foes to a negotiating table. This country is currently a world-leading miracle peace project with many lesions for conflict-ridden nations and I would urge it to use its peace-broking skills to help us achieve lasting peace just as it has done here,” Zeitoun said.
Zeitoun, who suggested tearing up Syria into pieces of mini countries if a national peace accord cannot be found, said various tribes within Syria can be offered autonomy to rule themselves.
“It will be painful but if that can be the prize for peace, we have no choice. Anything that can lead to peace and security for the ordinary, some of whom spend months on end in underground bunkers, will be a welcome initiative.”
