and Patrick Worsnip Reuters THE UN-Arab League envoy on the Syrian crisis, Kofi Annan, brings global stature and experience in conflict resolution to his new job, but averting a long and bloody civil war that could further destabilize the Middle East might be impossible. Annan, UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006, was appointed by his successor Ban Ki-moon and Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby on Thursday after the UN General Assembly last week called for naming an envoy to push an Arab peace plan that asks Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to step aside. University of Notre Dame professor George Lopez said the choice of the Ghanian statesman over the other main candidate, former Finnish President and fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari, was “a bold choice.” “Assad has already been visited by high level diplomats — foreign ministers of Turkey and Russia, for example, and Arab League officials and he has been unresponsive,” he said. “It is significant that Kofi is a level higher who can — and will — look Assad in the eye and speak some truth to Assad's power.” Annan has no vested interest on either side of the conflict, he said, making it difficult for anyone to claim he has an agenda other than securing an end to Syria's 11-month crackdown on anti-Assad demonstrators that has killed thousands of civilians and brought the country to the brink of civil war. In Stanley Meisler's 2007 biography of Annan, the only reference to Assad and Annan conversing is a 2002 telephone call in which the UN chief urged Assad to vote in favor of a Security Council resolution on the return of UN weapons inspectors to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Assad, a strong ally of Saddam, dropped his objections and joined the other 14 council members to vote for the resolution. During his time at the helm of the United Nations, Annan successfully mediated a number of conflicts, including Nigeria's border dispute with Cameroon over control of the oil-rich Bakassi Peninsula. Annan persuaded Nigeria to accept a World Court ruling that awarded it to Cameroon.After leaving the world body, Annan helped negotiate an end to violence in Kenya that killed 1,220 people after the African nation's December 2007 election. But the escalating conflict in Syria, which the United Nations says has killed over 5,400 civilians, will likely prove much more difficult than Kenya or the Nigeria-Cameroon dispute. Western diplomats say the United States and Europe appeared to favor Ahtisaari, who oversaw negotiations on Serbia's former province of Kosovo, which seceded in 2008. But they added that Western capitals had no problem with the choice of Annan. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner described Annan as an “outstanding choice.” UN spokesman Eduardo del Buey said Annan was selected for “the high esteem in which he's held in the international community, and his impeccable knowledge” of the region. One of the chief political hurdles Annan will have to confront is a deadlocked UN Security Council. Russia and China twice joined forces in a double veto of resolutions condemning the Syrian crackdown and calling for an end to the fighting. It remains unclear whether Annan can persuade Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, widely expected to return to the presidency after elections next month, to stop shielding Assad, whom Moscow sees as a key ally in a country that hosts Russia's only warm-water naval port outside the former Soviet Union. __
