Clinton sees need to plan for post-Assad Syria

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday that the defections of Syria's prime minister and other senior officials increase the urgency of planning for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

In South Africa's capital, Pretoria, Clinton said the U.S. and other nations need to make sure that Syrian state institutions remain intact once Assad loses his grip on power.

"The intensity of the fighting in Aleppo, the defections, really point out how imperative it is that we come together and work toward a good transition plan," Clinton said.

On a visit to start the handover of control of an AIDS prevention and treatment program, she also said that global efforts to stop the virus "have saved hundreds of thousands of lives." South Africa has the world's highest rate of HIV infection.

On Syria, Clinton said the opposition is becoming increasingly effective and better armed. But the fighting has created "desperate humanitarian needs of those suffering inside Syria and those who have fled. These are growing by the day," she said.

Clinton spoke a day after the defection of Prime Minister Riad Hijab, the latest in a string of high-level departures from the Assad regime.

The defections reinforce her view that Assad's regime will not survive. "I do think we can begin talking about planning for what happens next: the day after the regime does fall. I am not going to put a timeline on it, I can't possibly predict it, but I know it's going to happen as do most observers around the world," Clinton said.

She said she would raise these issues when she travels to Turkey for talks on Syria on Saturday.

Clinton played down U.S. concerns over South Africa's reluctance to support Western-backed initiatives at the United Nations, where South Africa is wrapping up a two-year elected term on the Security Council. South Africa abstained on the last Security Council resolution on Syria, which would have called for sanctions for non-compliance with Kofi Annan's peace plan. The resolution failed on a double veto by Russia and China.

"As crisis and opportunities arise there are tough issues that we have to tackle together," Clinton said. "We do not always see eye-to-eye on these issues. ... Sometimes we will disagree, as friends do."

Clinton and Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane pledged to intensify cooperation in dealing with crises in African hotspots, such as in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

In South Africa, 5.7 million people ? 17.8 percent of the population ? have tested positive for HIV. PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has spent $3.2 billion on anti-retroviral drugs and HIV prevention programs in South Africa since 2004. The program was initiated by President George W. Bush and has been continued by President Barack Obama's administration.

On Wednesday in Cape Town, Clinton will preside at a ceremony at which the U.S. will begin shifting administrative control of the AIDS initiative and treatment implementation to the South Africans. The handover will take five years.

"We believe as partners on the continent we can do more about stability and the way we are going to foster economic growth and security," Nkoana-Mashabane said.

Later, at a U.S.-South Africa business summit, Clinton hailed the growing trade ties between the two countries. She noted that two-way trade had shot up 21 percent to almost $22 billion from 2010 to 2011.

Nearly 98 percent of South Africa's exports to the U.S. enter the country duty-free under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is set to expire in 2015. Nkoana-Mashabane urged the U.S. Congress to extend the act and Clinton said the administration would work with lawmakers on it.

Clinton is in South Africa at the midpoint of an 11-day tour that has already taken her to Senegal, Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya and Malawi. After the stop in Cape Town, she will travel on to Nigeria, Ghana and Benin before moving on to Turkey.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/clinton-sees-plan-post-assad-syria-133907638.html

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