But he is the most prominent figure to say in public that Assad will not win. He was speaking to the pro-Assad al-Akhbar paper in an interview from Damascus which is now hemmed in by rebel fighters to the south. Assad's forces have used jets and artillery to try to dislodge the fighters from around Damascus but the violence has crept into the heart of the capital and rebels announced on Sunday a new offensive in the central province of Hama. Sharaa said the situation in Syria, where more than 40,000 people have been killed, was deteriorating and a "historic settlement" was needed to end the conflict, involving regional powers and the UN Security Council and the formation of a national unity government "with broad powers".
"With every passing day the political and military solutions are becoming more distant. We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime," Sharaa was quoted as saying. "The opposition cannot decisively settle the battle and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a decisive settlement," he told the paper, adding that the insurgents fighting to topple Syria's leadership could plunge it into "anarchy and an unending spiral of violence".
Sources close to the Syrian government say Sharaa had pushed for dialogue with the opposition and objected to the military response to an uprising that began peacefully. In Damascus, residents said on Monday the army had told people to evacuate the Palestinian district of Yarmouk, suggesting an all-out military offensive on the southern district was imminent.
The centre of the city, largely insulated from the violence for 21 months, is now full of army and vigilante checkpoints and shakes to the sound of regular shelling, residents say. Queues for bread form at bakeries hours before dawn, as people seek out dwindling supplies, power cuts are increasing and fears are growing that Damascus could descend into chaos. In a veiled criticism of the crackdown, Sharaa said there was a difference between the state's duty to provide security to its citizens, and "pursuing a security solution to the crisis."
He said even Assad could not be certain where events in Syria were leading, but that anyone who met him would hear that "this is a long struggle and he does not hide his desire to settle matters militarily to reach a final solution." "We realise today that change is inevitable," Sharaa said, but "none of the peaceful or armed opposition groups with their known foreign links can call themselves the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people". "Likewise the current leadership...cannot achieve change alone after two years of crisis without new partners who contribute to preserving (Syria's) national fabric, territorial unity and regional sovereignty".
Rebels have now brought the war to the capital, without yet delivering a fatal blow to the government. But nor has Assad found the military muscle to oust his opponents from the city. In Paris, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius of France, one of the powers most insistent that Assad has lost his legitimacy, said: "I think the end is nearing for Bashar al-Assad."
In Damascus, activists said fighter jets bombed the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on Sunday, killing at least 25 people sheltering in a mosque. The attack was part of a month-old campaign by Assad's forces to eject rebels from positions they are establishing around the capital's perimeter. Yarmouk, to the south, falls within an arc of territory running from the east of Damascus to the south-west from where rebels hope to storm the government's main redoubt.