UN chief sees hope in Syria after end of Assad regime

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said there were signs of hope in Syria following the overthrow of President Bashar Al Assad by rebel forces over the weekend.

“As we speak, we are witnessing the reshaping of the Middle East. ... We also see some signs of hope, and signs of hope namely coming from the end of the Assad rule,” Guterres said during a visit to South Africa on Wednesday.

Guterres said after meeting South African foreign minister Ronald Lamola in the capital Pretoria that the United Nations was committed to a smooth transition of power in Syria.

“It’s our duty to do everything to support different Syrian leaders in order to make sure that they come together, they are able to guarantee a smooth transition, an inclusive transition in which all Syrians can feel that they belong,” Guterres told reporters. “The alternative doesn’t make any sense.”

Guterres said the toppling of Assad was “a sign of hope” after 50 years of rule by his family and nearly 13 years of civil war.

Syria’s transitional authorities must strive for a more inclusive process, bringing in different parties and communities to avoid new civil strife, the United Nations envoy for Syria said on Wednesday.

“My biggest concern is that the transition will create new contradictions in the manner that could lead to new civil strife and potentially a new civil war,” Geir Pedersen told AFP in a brief interview in Geneva.

Also during the day, Syria’s new prime minister said the Islamist-led alliance that ousted Assad will “guarantee” the rights of all religious groups and called on the millions who fled the war to return home.

With Assad’s overthrow plunging Syria into the unknown, its new rulers have sought to assure members of the country’s religious minorities that they will not repress them. They have also pledged justice for the victims of Assad’s rule, with HTS leader Abu Mohammed Al Jolani vowing on Wednesday that officials involved in torturing detainees will not be pardoned. Half a million people have been detained since the start of the war, with about 100,000 dying either under torture or due to poor detention conditions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

“We will not pardon those involved in torturing detainees,” said Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed Al Sharaa, urging “countries to hand over any of those criminals who may have fled so they can be brought to justice.”

Roaming the opulent Damascus home of Assad, Abu Omar felt a sense of giddy defiance being in the residence of the man he said had long oppressed him.

“I am taking pictures, because I am so happy to be here in the middle of his house,” said the 44-year-old.

“I came for revenge. They oppressed us in incredible ways.”

In the Assads’ heartland Qardaha, the tomb of the former leader’s father was set alight, AFP footage showed, with rebel fighters in fatigues and young men watching it burn.

Damascus airport, closed since rebel forces overran the Syrian capital at the weekend, is to reopen “in the next few days,” its director Anis Fallouh told AFP on Wednesday. “God willing, the airport will reopen as quickly as possible because we are going to work flat out,” Fallouh said.

Pushed to give a timeframe for the reopening, he said it ought to happen “in the next few days.” “We can quickly let aircraft resume flights through Syrian airspace, which has been closed,” he added.

There are currently 99 million Swiss francs ($112 million) worth of frozen Syrian assets in Switzerland, most of which have been blocked for years, the Swiss government said on Wednesday.

The bulk of the total has been frozen since Switzerland adopted European Union sanctions against Syria in May 2011, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) said. Switzerland this week added three more people to its Syria-related sanctions list, following a move by the EU.

“There are currently 318 individuals and 87 entities on the sanctions list,” a Seco spokesperson told Reuters, declining to say if Switzerland had frozen any assets of Assad. Swiss financial institutions once held blocked Syrian assets worth 130 million Swiss francs ($147 million), the Neue Zuercher Zeitung newspaper reported.

Agencies