Lakhdar Brahimi resigns as UN envoy to Syria

UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi will step down, effective 31 May, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on Tuesday at the UN in New York with Brahimi by his side.

"Brahimi has long been recognised as one of the world's greatest diplomats," the secretary general said. "The fact that his extraordinary talents have been met with failure is a tragedy to the Syrian people."

Brahimi has served as the UN and Arab League's envoy to the wartorn country since August 2012, organising two rounds of talks between Assad's government and members of the opposition in Geneva that proved fruitless.

There have been rumours about his resignation for a longtime and last year Brahimi said it was something he had thought about.

"Every day I wake up, I think I should resign," he told reporters at the UN last May. "But I haven't so far. One day, perhaps, one day I will resign, and I assure you, you will find out."

In leaving the post, he said he remained convinced the war in Syria can be brought to an end.

"I am sure the crisis will end." Brahimi said on Tuesday, "and the question is how many more dead, how much more destruction will there be before Syria returns to what to what we knew and loved it as being."

Commentators say the warring parties and their international backers, not Brahimi, are to blame for a failure to find a solution to the Syrian conflict.

"For all the valid criticisms that may be made about what he has or has not done, the primary failings to resolve this appalling conflict lie not with him but the parties he had to work with and the international players who failed to reach a consensus on how to end the war," said Chris Doyle, director of the London based Council for Arab-British Understanding.

"Unless there is a revised international strategy on Syria, it is likely that any future envoy will soon be complaining of the same fruitless head banging exercise," he added.

Secretary-General Ki-moon said he needed "some time to think" about who should succeed Brahimi, but diplomatic sources speaking to Al Jazeera said Tunisian Kamel Morjane is in the running as a replacement. Morjane served as defence and then foreign minister in Tunisia until the 2011 uprising led to the removal of former president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali from power.

Political leaders and commentators were quick to react to the news on Twitter.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt thanked Brahimi, while France's UN representative blamed the Syrian government for his failure.

Former UN staffer Salman Shaikh, now director of the Brookings Doha thinktank, said Brahimi is held in the highest esteem at the UN and the BBC's Lyse Doucet said he knew the job was going to be tough from the beginning.

Brahimi is due to address the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday at 3pm (8pm GMT).