Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
to hand over power to a transitional government, as U.N.-led peace talks opened in Switzerland
...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell...
"I call on (the regime delegation) to immediately sign the Geneva I communique (setting out) the total transfer of powers from Assad, including for the army and security, to a transition government," Ahmad Jarba, president of the Syrian National Coalition, told the delegations gathered in the city of Montreux.
"We completely agree with the decisions of Geneva I which you have all agreed upon," he said, referring to a pact sealed in June 2012, which assented to the establishment of a mutually agreed transitional government.
The Syrian regime of President Bashir al-Assad has contested that the peace talks, which will continue later in the week in Geneva, would not set the scene for a handover of power.
But Jarba insisted the Geneva I deal was "the preamble to Bashir al-Assad's resignation and his trial alongside all the criminals of his regime".
He revealed the Syrian opposition was going to present a detailed timetable, complete with deadlines, to the next phase of the negotiations due to open in Geneva later in the week.
"If Assad remains in power in any way, that would mean that the Geneva II process is diverting from its path," Jarba argued.
"We seek reassurances that we have a Syrian partner in this room, and that this partner can transform itself from a delegation in Assad's name to a delegation in the name of Syria."
Later in the day, Jarba called for an international inquiry into allegations of mass torture and killings of people detained by the regime.
"We have to stop this spiral of violence. We do call for an international inspection to visit places of detention and see the facts of torture that our citizens face every day," he told the end of the first day of a peace conference in Switzerland.
"We must work together for a Syria, which will be a pluralist country excluding no-one, not excluding any ethnicity Alawites, Druze, Christians and others," Jarba told world leaders gathered in Montreux.
"We have suffered enough from the murders, the bombardments and this bloodshed has continued for far too long."
He was speaking after the publication of a report alleging the "industrial-scale" torture and murder of 11,000 detainees by the regime of Assad.