From "The Washington Post"

The West dismissed Russian offer to help remove Assad in 2012, says top diplomat

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By Ishaan Tharoor and Julia Smirnova September 15 at 1:00 PM

Sandbags are used as barriers in war-torn Aleppo's Saif al-Dawla district on March 6. (Hosam Katan/Reuters)

Finnish diplomat and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari suggested that there was a moment early on during Syria's hideous war when a political solution could have been thrashed out. Ahtisaari claims that in February 2012, when the conflict had claimed under 10,000 lives, Russia's envoy to the United Nations outlined a peace plan that could have led to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's exit from power.

Ahtisaari detailed the discussions in an interview with the Guardian newspaper: Vitaly Churkin, the Russian envoy, "said three things," according to Ahtisaari. "One — we should not give arms to the opposition. Two — we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three — we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside."

Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008for his efforts as a negotiator and settler of conflicts around the world, was adamant about the seriousness of Churkin's proposal, which he believed had the Kremlin's backing.

According to the Guardian, Ahtisaari had been sent in February 2012 to speak with the ambassadors of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council at the behest of the Elders, a group of senior statesmen and former world leaders focused on peace and the defense of human rights. The envoys from the United States, France and Britain apparently "ignored" Churkin's proposal.

"Nothing happened because I think [the Western diplomats], and many others, were convinced that Assad would be thrown out of office in a few weeks so there was no need to do anything," Ahtisaari told the Guardian.

By August 2011, the White House had already demanded that Assad cede power. The glow of the Arab Spring, which had seen a succession of entrenched dictators fall in the space of a year, had probably influenced the administration's thinking on Syria.

The Russians, meanwhile, had given very little indication that they ever were willing to force through a resolution to the conflict that would entail the removal of longtime ally Assad. Just weeks before Ahtisaari had his chat with Churkin in February 2012, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had visited Damascus and strongly backed the Assad regime's supposed overtures to the opposition.

"Efforts to stop violence have to be met with dialogue by all the political forces," Lavrov said at the time. "Today we received confirmation of the readiness of the president of Syria for this work."