Brahimi to Meet with Syria’s President Assad

(FNA)- New UN-Arab League Special Envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi is due to visit Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following a meeting with Egyptian President Mohammad Mursi.

Lakhdar Brahimi is in Egypt on the first leg of a regional tour to resolve Syrian problem.

Brahimi is due to leave Cairo for the Syrian capital to meet with President Bashar al-Assad on the second leg of his trip.

Brahimi, who replaced Kofi Annan, arrived in Cairo late on Sunday and is scheduled to meet with Egypt's President Mohammad Mursi, Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr and Secretary General of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi on Monday.

Former UN-Arab League Special Envoy on Syria Kofi Annan announced on August 2 that he was quitting because of the lack of international support for his peace plan.

On August 17, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Brahimi as the new joint special representative of the UN and the Arab League for Syria to replace Annan.

Brahimi, who was Algeria's foreign minister from 1991 to 1993, also served as the UN envoy in Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and in Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

In October, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of stirring unrests in Syria once again.

The US and its western and regional allies have long sought to topple Bashar al-Assad and his ruling system. Media reports said that the Syrian rebels and terrorist groups have received significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, a crime paid for by the Persian Gulf Arab states and coordinated by the United States.