Foreign Affairs committee  The reason I'm hesitating is because the notion of cohesion and the opposition is sometimes hard to deal with, because it's a very divisive group. When we're talking about the opposition, it depends who we're talking about. In terms of the opposition coalition, which is sort of

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm just summarizing. The Geneva communiqué of 2012 lays out on four or five pages an agreed program and basic principles and these are reaffirmed by the London 11 final communiqué this past year. The idea is to set up a diverse democratic state that reflects the interest of al

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, I'm not sure we're 100% comfortable with that. We do not formally recognize the Syrian opposition coalition as the sole legitimate representatives of the Syrian people, as many other countries do, because of concerns we continue to have about the diversity of the membership

Foreign Affairs committee  I saw the same reports. We have very few ways to verify the veracity of them, but I don't doubt them for a second. I think doing that is very much in Assad's playbook.

Foreign Affairs committee  Again, while the Chinese are sort of lumped in with that group, they're less of an issue in this than Russia. Certainly, Russia is their major international backer—actually, they are along with Iran, and we can get into that later, maybe. But certainly Russia is a principal supp

Foreign Affairs committee  Do you have anything to say about that?

Foreign Affairs committee  I think the point is that certainly there will be other sources. Iran could be another source, as well; if not a source, it may be a conduit. It's difficult to stem the flow of arms to the regime. They're much better armed certainly than the opposition would be, and will remain s

Foreign Affairs committee  They had a pretty good head start on this. They had a pretty well-developed and advanced—advanced in terms of size—military, which has taken a beating but not as much as we would think. They started from a pretty high base and they did receive some arms. Whether they continue to

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  In terms of diplomatic initiatives, I think, frankly speaking, that all of our bets are on the Geneva process. It's really the only game in town at this stage. There were very low expectations going into Geneva. I was willing to bet that they wouldn't even last a couple of days,

Foreign Affairs committee  There is another meeting of the high-level group on access. Let's just say a word or two about that.

Foreign Affairs committee  To follow up a little bit on the issue of the tipping point, I guess the problem and the risk is that nobody knows where that point is. If we had looked at the beginning of the crisis and said what would be the tipping point in terms of the kinds of pressures the neighbouring cou

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll just say very quickly on the issue of getting the women and children out of Homs that I was in Montreux with Minister Baird and there was some discussion around it. The opposition was concerned that basically you would be clearing out women and children and declaring open se

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you. My focus today will be on the political and security aspects of the situation in Syria as it has evolved since my director general, Mark Gwozdecky, appeared before you on December 3, 2013. Details on the humanitarian situation will be given by my colleague Leslie Nor