Syria Fires Official Who Tried to Broker Peace

BEIRUT, Lebanon - The Syrian government on Tuesday fired a deputy prime minister who has lately been its most outspoken voice in favor of reform and who recently held meetings with American and Russian officials about peace talks that world leaders are trying to arrange to end Syria's civil war.

The official, Qadri Jamil, was dismissed for spending too much time outside the country, neglecting his duties and holding meetings 'without coordinating with the government,' Syrian state television said. He was fired shortly after Mr. Jamil told the Russian news media that he had met with United States officials. Meetings between Syrian and American officials have been rare since the Syrian uprising began in 2011.

A State Department spokeswoman confirmed on Tuesday that the United States ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, met with Mr. Jamil on Saturday in Geneva, calling the encounter one in 'a long list' of meetings with people directly or indirectly connected to the Syrian government to discuss the potential peace talks.

Mr. Jamil, a Soviet-educated economist, was one of two members of tolerated opposition parties appointed to the government last year in a move billed as broadening its base. In an interview last month in Damascus, the Syrian capital, he blamed corrupt people on both sides for prolonging the war, and said that despite his post, he was part of the 'patriotic opposition,' which has not supported the armed uprising.

Behind the scenes, American and Russian officials have been holding meetings with Syrians inside and outside government to set up the planned talks. But there is little sign of movement, with the main Syrian exile opposition group demanding the departure of President Bashar al-Assad as a precondition and Mr. Assad saying he will not talk with those bearing arms against him.

The State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the firing did not represent any broader message about the Syrian government's willingness to participate. But opposition activists called it a ploy that would allow Russia to present Mr. Jamil as a representative of the opposition during peace talks.

And analysts said it could be a strong warning that Mr. Assad planned to remain fully in control of any peace talks or political transition - a message delivered as Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy on Syria, visits Damascus to try to catalyze a peace process.

Randa Slim, a Syria expert at the New America Foundation, a public policy institute in Washington, said the firing of Mr. Jamil served to remind the United States and Russia that any peace talks 'must go through Assad.'

'Sacking Qadri Jamil is also a sign of how strong Assad feels today,' Ms. Slim wrote in a Twitter message. 'Jamil was very much Russia 's man.'

Analysts in the region and supporters and opponents of Mr. Assad alike say that with the Syrian government holding its own and the rebel movement divided, it appears increasingly likely that the talks, if they take place, will work toward a deal in which Mr. Assad stays on, at least for an initial transition phase.

Mr. Jamil, speaking from Moscow to the Lebanese television channel Al Mayadeen after being fired Monday, said that his disagreements with the government were mild and declared that the demand for Mr. Assad to step down was 'crippling' the dialogue before it could start.

'The idea of Assad stepping down is out of the question,' he said.

Mr. Jamil said it made little sense for the government, which has said it will attend the Geneva talks, to blame him for meeting with the talks' sponsors, adding that he was working to 'end the blood bath in Syria.'

But he said that while he did not want to work with the Syrian government as a full-time partisan, he would go to Geneva as part of a loyal opposition and would eventually return to Syria.

At their meeting last week, Mr. Jamil tried unsuccessfully to persuade Mr. Ford to allow him to attend the meeting as an opposition member, Reuters reported, citing a Middle Eastern official. Neither the armed opposition nor the main umbrella group for the nonviolent opposition, the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, accept Mr. Jamil as an opposition member. And in recent weeks, he had been stripped of his economic portfolio and scapegoated by state media for the country's inflation and food and fuel shortages.

In another move that appeared aimed at positioning the government for Geneva, Mr. Assad on Tuesday issued an amnesty lifting criminal penalties for those who deserted the army, provided they turn themselves in and rejoin the service within 30 days if they are in Syria and 60 if they are abroad.

While the government says small numbers of fighters have accepted amnesties in scattered local deals, fighters and opposition activists said the offer was unlikely to win broad acceptance given the lack of trust.

Ryan Crocker, a former United States ambassador to Syria, called the deal 'a good gambit before Geneva, if it ever happens.'

'It would require the opposition to admit to being criminals, which of course they won't do,' he said, adding that Mr. Assad could then argue, 'They had their chance and must be pursued as unrepentant enemies of the state.'

Maher, a former Syrian political prisoner who is now in Lebanon and gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said in a telephone interview that such an amnesty, if accepted, would be 'a coronation of Assad's victory over the revolution.'

But many Syrians are still exploring, however cautiously, deals to ease the bloodshed.

The persistence - and fragility - - of such attempts was underscored again on Tuesday as hundreds more civilians left the Damascus suburb of Moadhamiya, which has been blockaded for months by the government. They departed under a cease-fire brokered between rebels there and a delegation including a Roman Catholic nun and Syria's minister of social affairs.

But within hours, residents of Moadhamiya were reporting that scores of evacuees had been immediately detained at a nearby military base. An official with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which transported some of the evacuees, said they were men of fighting age who, under the deal, had to undergo background checks. The government news agency portrayed the evacuees as having been rescued from 'armed terrorist groups.'

Several thousand civilians left this month during two brief cease-fires; a third was called off when government shelling erupted. Aid workers said that while any aid to civilians was welcome, the evacuations were no replacement for ending the blockade and allowing food and medicine to flow to people trapped inside.

Mohammad Ghannam and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.