West ‘ignored Russian offer in 2012 to have Assad step aside’ 

Russia proposed more than three years ago that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad could step down as part of a peace deal, according to a senior negotiator involved in back-channel discussions at the time.

The former Finnish president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martti Ahtisaari, said western powers failed to seize on the proposal. Since it was made, in 2012, tens of thousands of people have been killed and millions uprooted, causing the world’s gravest refugee crisis since the World War II.

Mr. Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian Ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the Opposition.

Opportunity lost

But he said that the U.S., Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the proposal. “It was an opportunity lost in 2012,” Mr. Ahtisaari said in an interview.

Officially, Russia has staunchly backed Mr. Assad through the four-and-a-half year Syrian war, insisting that his removal cannot be part of any peace settlement. Mr. Assad has said that Russia will never abandon him. Moscow has recently begun sending troops, tanks and aircraft in an effort to stabilise the Assad regime, and fight Islamic State extremists.

On February 22, 2012, he was sent to meet the missions of the permanent five nations at U.N. headquarters in New York by The Elders , a group of former world leaders advocating peace and human rights that has included Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan.