DAMASCUS, Jan 6: President Bashar al-Assad offered a roadmap to end Syria’s conflict in a rare speech on Sunday in which he branded the opposition “slaves” of the West and told foreign powers to stop backing his opponents.

The main Syrian opposition grouping, the National Coalition, immediately rejected the plan while Britain described Mr Assad’s speech, his first in public in seven months, as “beyond hypocritical”.

President Assad, speaking to wild applause from ecstatic crowds packed into a cultural centre in Damascus, outlined a plan he said was aimed at resolving the 21-month conflict which according to the UN has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

First step, he said, was for foreign powers to end their support for armed forces seeking to topple his regime.

“Right after that, our military operations will cease,” he said, adding, without elaborating, that a mechanism would be set up to monitor any such truce.

The government would then step up contacts to convene a national dialogue conference with opponents “inside and outside” the country, who do not take orders from abroad.

“We will hold dialogue with (those who are) the masters (of their decisions) not the slaves (of foreign powers),” Mr Assad said.

The national dialogue conference would draft a charter which would then be put to a referendum. That would be followed by parliamentary elections and the formation of a new government, he said.

Any resolution of the conflict, however, had to be purely Syrian and “there must be agreement at the national dialogue conference”. “We are now faced with a state of war in every sense of the word, an external aggression more deadly and dangerous than conventional wars implemented through a handful of Syrians and many foreigners,” President Assad said in the speech televised live.

He said the conflict was not one between the government and the opposition but between the “nation and its enemies” saying of his opponents: “This is not a loyal opposition but a gang of killers.

“The one thing that is sure that those who we face today are those who carry the Al Qaeda ideology,” he said, repeating previous assertions that “foreign terrorists” were behind the uprising.

The National Coalition, which insists that Mr Assad must step aside before it is willing to enter dialogue, said his speech was directed at those ready to see him remain in power.

President Assad would not accept “any initiative that does not restore stability to his regime and put him at the helm of control”, spokesman Walid al-Bunni said by phone.

“He wants negotiating partners of his own choosing and will not accept any initiative that could meet the aspirations of the Syrian people or ultimately lead to his departure and the dismantling of his regime.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said President Assad’s first speech to the nation since June was full of “empty promises” and would “fool no one”. He took to Twitter to vent his anger, writing: “Assad speech beyond hypocritical. Deaths, violence and oppression engulfing Syria are his own making, empty promises of reform fool no one.”

In Brussels, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said: “We will look carefully if there is anything new in the speech but we maintain our position that Assad has to step aside and allow for a political transition.”—AFP