Syria’s Assad poised to remain president through 2014

Syria’s foreign minister laid out a hard line Wednesday, insisting that Bashar Assad will remain Syria’s president at least until elections in 2014 and might run for another term, conditions that will make it difficult for Syria’s opposition to agree to U.N.-sponsored talks on ending Syria’s civil war.

Any deal reached in such talks would have to be put to a referendum, Walid al-Moallem said in a TV interview, introducing a new condition that could complicate efforts by the U.S. and Russia to bring the two sides together at an international conference in Geneva, possibly next month.

The wide-ranging comments by al-Moallem, , a regime stalwart with decades in top positions, reflected a new confidence by Assad’s government, which had seemed near collapse during a rebel offensive last summer but has scored a number of battlefield successes in recent weeks.

“Our armed forces have regained the momentum,” the foreign minister said. He suggested that the regime is digging in. Asked by Lebanon’s Al-Mayadeen station when the civil war might end, he said: “That depends on when the patience of those conspiring against Syria will run out.”

The uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, turned into an armed insurgency in response to a harsh regime crackdown and escalated into a civil war. The fighting has killed more than 70,000 people, uprooted more than 5 million and devastated large areas of the country.

The conflict has taken on strong sectarian overtones — most of the armed rebels are Sunni Muslims, a majority in Syria, while Assad has retained core support among the country’s minorities, including his own Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, along with Christians and Shiite Muslims.

Al-Moallem spoke at a time when Syria’s fractured political opposition was bogged down in internal power struggles. The main, exile-based umbrella group, the Syrian National Coalition, has met for the past week in Istanbul, Turkey, to expand representation, choose new leaders and devise a strategy for talks in Geneva.

The coalition spent most of that time arguing about membership issues, drawing a warning Wednesday from exasperated grassroots activists in Syria that they would cut ties unless the political leadership changes course.

Leading opposition members have said they would only attend the Geneva talks if Assad’s departure from power tops the agenda, a demand on which sponsors Russia and the U.S. appear to disagree and which derailed efforts a year ago to negotiate an end to the civil war.

The Syrian foreign minister said Assad will remain in his post at least until scheduled elections in 2014.

“From now until the next elections, President Bashar Assad is president of the Syrian Arab Republic,” he said. “Will Assad run in 2014 or not? This depends on the circumstances in 2014 and on the popular will. If the people want him to run, he will run. If the people don’t want that, I don’t think he will. Let us not jump the gun.”

The regime’s assertion comes as Syria’s opposition movement finds itself in disarray over whether to attend the upcoming talks.