UK Foreign Secretary Hints Britain Will Accept Assad In Power In Syria

(AP) – Britain’s foreign minister says Syrian President Bashar Assad should be permitted to run for election as part of a “democratic resolution” of the civil war in the Mideast nation.

Boris Johnson, speaking on Thursday to the international relations committee at the House of Lords, described Britain’s position on Syria as “catastrophic.”

He says Britain “played itself out of the game” in 2013, when lawmakers voted against military action, but could serve a peacekeeping role in a future political solution.

He says that now, an election “properly supervised by the U.N.” and giving displaced Syrians a vote “might be the way forward.”

The fighting in Syria, which began with an Arab Spring-inspired uprising against the Assad family’s four-decade rule, is estimated to have killed more than 400,000 people since March 2011.