Both official media and an opposition group on Sunday branded as a failure a world powers deal on a transition plan for Syria a day after at least 120 people were reported killed in violence nationwide.World powers meeting in Geneva on Saturday agreed a transition plan that could include current regime members, but the West did not see any role for Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Trampler of Homs...
in a new unity government.
Russia and China insisted that Syrians themselves must decide how the transition happens, rather than allow others to dictate their fate.
Moscow and Beijing, which have twice blocked U.N. Security Council resolutions on Syria, both signed up to the final agreement that did not make any explicit call for Assad to cede power.
Official Syrian media and the opposition Local Coordination Committees (LCC) group demonstrated rare agreement in slamming the outcome.
The meeting "failed," trumpeted Al-Baath, newspaper of the ruling party.
"The agreement of the task force on Syria in Geneva on Saturday resembles an enlarged meeting of the UN Security Council where the positions of participants remained the same," it said.
The LCC, which organizes protests on the ground in Syria, said the outcome showed once again the failure to adopt a common position.
It called the transition accord "just one version, different in form only, of the demands of Russian leaders allied to the Assad regime and who cover it militarily and politically in the face of international pressure."
Burhan Ghalioun, a senior member and former head of the SNC, told pan-Arab television Al-Arabiya that "this is the worst international statement yet to emerge from talks on Syria."
According to the opposition coalition's official Facebook page, he described the plan as a "farce."
Ghalioun called a "mockery" the notion that Syrians should negotiate with "their executioner, who has not stopped killing, torturing... and raping women for 16 months."
SNC spokeswoman Basma Qadmani told AFP in Ankara there were some "positive elements" in the deal, although "important elements remain too ambiguous... and the plan is too vague to foresee real and immediate action."
"The first one is that the final declaration says that the participants agree to say that the Assad family cannot rule the country any more, and therefore the Assad family cannot lead the transition period."
"The second positive element is the agreement that the transition should comply with the legitimate aspirations of Syrian people.
"For us this means that Assad should go because Syrian people have already said that they want Assad to go."
At least 120 people were killed, mostly civilians, on Saturday, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights said.
On Sunday, at least nine people were killed, the watchdog said.
Regime forces also shelled several neighborhoods of the central city of Homs and blasts were heard in Damascus
...Home to a staggering array of terrorist organizations...
, it added.
The Geneva deal came despite initial pessimism about the prospects of the talks amid deep divisions between the West and China and Russia on how to end the violence that the Observatory says has killed more than 15,800 since March 2011.
U.N. and Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
envoy Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...said it was up to the Syrians to decide who they wanted in a unity government.
But he added: "I would doubt that Syrians... would select people with blood on their hands to lead them."