Brahimi plans to resign during coming weeks

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, has informed senior UN diplomats that he intends to resign in the coming weeks, marking the end of another doomed UN diplomatic effort to end a bloody civil war that has left over 70,000 dead, Washington Post reported. The decision pitches the world's main diplomatic initiative on Syria into a state of crisis at a time when the United States and its allies are weighing a response to new intelligence reports indicating that Syria may have used chemical weapons against its people. It comes as Ake Sellstrom, the UN's newly appointed chemical weapons inspector, arrived in Washington for meetings on the Syrian program. The United States has sought to persuade Brahimi to put off his plans to step down until after US Secretary of State John Kerry concludes a May 7-8 visit to Moscow for meetings on Syria and other matters with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The State Department would not confirm the resignation and referred questions to Brahimi. Addressing persistent reports of Brahimi's likely exit earlier this week, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the Obama administration hoped he would stay on. Kerry met with the envoy Monday in Washington in hopes of persuading him to continue.