Syria’s Foreign Ministry is lashing out at U.N. Middle East peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for “flagrant bias,” after Brahimi told a BBC interviewer that Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad was resisting the aspirations of the Syrian people. Brahimi, who was meeting in Geneva this week with senior U.S. and Russian officials, also called for political reform and for an end to “reforms granted magnanimously from above” by the Assad family. Meanwhile, Syrian rebels, having been slowed in recent weeks after making dramatic gains at the end of 2012, overran a key helicopter base, according to Arabic media outlets. The loss of air superiority or access by the Syrian regime would badly cripple its efforts to resist opposition forces.

[Photo: VOA / Wiki Commons]