and hisham melhem, the washington bureau chief for the al arabiya news network. joshua landis, to you first. between the kofi annan efforts and the meeting and efrts of the friends of syria group, you e promise in all of th for endto the violee? >> not an end to the violence. in some ways the international community is working at cross purposes because annan is working on essentially a surrender document for the syrian opposition. because it leaves assad in power. it calls for dialogue. the opposition said they don't want any of it. they want to overturn this regime. they don't want to talk with it. and the foreign community, led by the united states, has been promising the opposition that it will beef up its support for it in order to bring down e reme. so there are messages going... messages at cross-purposes going on here. but to a certain extent this is positive news for the syrian opposition. the foreign community has put them on training wheels, if you will. the foreign... the opposition has been very faxalized. the free syrian army just a few weeks ago cal

>> well, i certainly understand what hisham melhem is saying. i think he's absolutely right. i think the russians are about to turn on the syrians nor t chinese nor the iranians. you know, president assad has been pounding the syrian opposition in the last month-and-a-half. he believes... he stated just the other day that the opposition was finished, that he was wrapping up. that he's mopping up things. that's what he's hoping. that's why he's given the date of april 9. he thinks he can beat this opposition. clearly the international community believes that devastating sanctions supporting the opposition that in the long run the, you know, the sunni muslims are 65% of syria. the othersre 12%. tht's the leadingroupn the military and the president. and that this is going to be decided on the part that the sunnis are going to win. that's a win for america. it's pro saudi arabia. it's anti-iran. it's good for the majority of syrians. so that's what they're counting on. i think that's going to be a long, drawnout struggle of years because the syrian military is still very strong.