Assad ´part of the solution´ in Syria: UN envoy

VIENNA: Any resolution to the fighting in Syria must involve President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura said Friday in the first such acknowledgement by the UN.

"President Assad is part of the solution," de Mistura told a joint press conference with Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz in Vienna.

"I will continue to have very important discussions with him," he added, noting that "the only solution is a political solution".

This was the first time a UN envoy on Syria has explicitly named Assad as part of a peaceful solution after nearly four years of fighting between government forces and rebels seeking his overthrow.

De Mistura´s remarks drew condemnation from the key opposition National Coalition as well as from activists on the ground in Syria.

"I think De Mistura is fooling himself if he thinks that Assad is part of the solution," coalition member Samir Nashar told AFP by telephone from Istanbul.

"Assad is the problem, not part of the solution," he insisted. De Mistura, who was in Damascus this week to meet Assad, is due to deliver a report on his mission to the UN Security Council on February 17.

If no solution to the conflict is found, "the only one who takes advantage of it is ISIS Daesh," de Mistura said, using another name to refer to the jihadist Islamic State group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq.

The group is a "monster waiting for this conflict to take place in order to be able to take advantage", he said.

But Nashar disagreed, saying: "If Assad was really interested in fighting Daesh, he would have sent his troops to Raqa rather than to Douma."

Raqa is the self-proclaimed capital of the jihadists in northern Syria, while Douma is a rebel bastion in the Eastern Ghouta area east of Damascus under a suffocating regime siege for more than a year.

More than 183 people have been killed in near daily bombardment of Douma over the past few weeks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said 29 children were among the dead.