As Diplomatic Efforts Stall in Syria, U.N. Says It Will End Its Observer Mission
By RICK GLADSTONE 
August 16, 2012
NY Times
– HYPERLINK http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/world/middleeast/united-nations-observer-mission-in-syria-to-end.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print \t _blank http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/world/middleeast/united-nations-observer-mission-in-syria-to-end.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
The United Nations Security Council decided on Thursday to terminate the http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org \o More articles about the United Nations. \t _blank United Nations observer mission in http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/syria/index.html?inline=nyt-geo \o More news and information about Syria. \t _blank Syria, where the increasingly violent rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad’s government has left diplomatic peacemaking efforts paralyzed. But the Security Council agreed to keep a much smaller United Nations office in the country, holding out hope that a political solution was still possible. 
France’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gérard Araud, the Security Council’s current president, announced the decision after a meeting on the future of the observer mission, three days before its mandate expires. He said all 15 members had agreed that the conditions for extending the mission — reduced violence and an end to the Syrian government’s use of heavy weapons — had not been met. 
“If you don’t renew the mandate, the mandate is over,” Mr. Araud said afterward. He said the dismantling of the mission, which at its peak had 300 unarmed observers, “will start in a few days.” 
Mr. Araud also said that the Security Council had approved a request by http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ban_ki_moon/index.html?inline=nyt-per \o More articles about Ban Ki-moon. \t _blank Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, to maintain an office in Damascus, Syria’s capital, with its exact nature and size to be determined. “There will be a U.N. presence, and we hope a useful U.N. presence,” he said. 
The withdrawal of the observer mission represented what some diplomatic experts called an unusual acknowledgment by the United Nations that it was helpless to resolve a bitter sectarian-tinged conflict in which an estimated 18,000 people have been killed and none of the antagonists are interested in negotiating. 
Some characterized the withdrawal as a positive development that would remove what they called the pretense that a viable peace effort was under way. 
“Where the U.N. gets in trouble is when you have placeholders, when something’s better than nothing,” said Bruce W. Jentleson, a former State Department diplomat who is now a professor of public policy and political science at Duke University. “Something is not always better than nothing.” 
Still, the Security Council’s decision runs the risk of further marginalizing the role of the United Nations in the Syrian war, leaving it vulnerable to the same criticism of inaction that it has faced in other major armed conflicts where civilians have suffered massacres and other brutalities. 
Mr. Ban and other United Nations officials, mindful of the failures in thwarting atrocities like the 1994 Rwanda – HYPERLINK http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/rwanda/genocide/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier \o More articles about the Rwandan genocide. \t _blank genocide and 1995 Srebrenica massacre, have repeatedly invoked those events in talking about Syria. Last month Mr. Ban, paying the http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42562&Cr=Srebrenica&Cr1= \o Link to U.N. report on Ban’s Srebrenica visit. \t _blank first-ever visit by a secretary general to the memorial site for the 8,000 men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica, said, “I do not want to see any of my successors, after 20 years, visiting Syria, apologizing for what we could have done now to protect the civilians in Syria, which we are not doing now.” 
Edmond Mulet, the assistant secretary general for – HYPERLINK http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/department_of_peacekeeping_operations/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier \o More articles about U.N. peacekeeping. \t _blank peacekeeping, who attended the Security Council meeting and will help oversee the monitor mission’s withdrawal, acknowledged that “the situation on the ground is extremely difficult” in Syria. Still, he said, “the fact that it’s difficult doesn’t mean we should not face the challenge.” 
Mr. Mulet said the new office would be much smaller than the observer mission, perhaps 20 to 30 people, whose precise duties were not clear yet. He said there would be no more military observers. “It’s clear that both sides have chosen the path of war, open conflict,” he said. “The space for political dialogue is very reduced at this point.” 
There had been widespread expectations that the Security Council would decide not to renew the observer mission’s mandate because of the violence in Syria, which had forced the mission’s commanding officer to drastically reduce the staff and basically confine those who remained to their Damascus hotel for the past two months. 
The observer mission was created as part of the peace plan for Syria negotiated by Kofi Annan, the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, who announced his resignation two weeks ago in frustration over his failure to persuade Mr. Assad and his adversaries to halt the conflict, now 18 months old. 
Speculation intensified that the United Nations and Arab League were close to announcing a successor to Mr. Annan. 
Diplomats said they believed that the replacement would be Lakhdar Brahimi, a widely respected Algerian statesman who has worked for the United Nations in other trouble spots, including Afghanistan and Iraq. But a spokesman for Mr. Brahimi declined to confirm that he had accepted the job. 
In a move that appeared to take other United Nations diplomats by surprise on Thursday, Russia’s ambassador announced after the Security Council meeting that he was inviting representatives from the group of influential countries and organizations that had attended a Syria meeting in Geneva to take part in a meeting on Friday at the United Nations. The ambassador, Vitaly I. Churkin, told reporters that “the purpose is to call on all the parties to stop the violence.” 
But it was unclear what would be likely to result from such a meeting or who would attend. In Washington, Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman, said, “Frankly, we’re not sure we understand the objective and the goal of the meeting.”