LONDON: Western and Gulf nations opposed to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad will hold their latest meeting in London on May 15 to discuss stepping up support for rebels, Britain’s Foreign Office said yesterday.
The core 11 countries involved in the so-called “Friends of Syria” will also seek ways of getting aid into Syria, and discuss the political situation ahead of a widely criticised presidential election in June, it said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague will host the talks, which US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to attend. “This meeting comes at a time of widespread indiscriminate regime violence against civilians, plans to hold elections which will be a grotesque parody of democracy, and the regime’s complete failure to provide humanitarian access,” it said.
“Foreign Ministers will discuss how best to significantly step up our support to the Syrian opposition, make urgent progress on improving the deteriorating humanitarian crisis and reinvigorate a political process that has stalled due to regime intransigence.”
The 11 nations include Western powers the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy as well as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Arab powers Egypt and Jordan are also part of the group, which does not include Assad’s allies Russia and Iran.
Meanwhile, at least 30 Syrian soldiers were killed in a powerful explosion caused by a massive bomb that rebels planted in a tunnel they dug under a checkpoint, a monitor said yesterday.
“Around 30 regime forces were killed... in a blast in which several tonnes of explosives were planted in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint on the northeastern outskirts of the town of Maaret Al Numan,” group said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Observatory said the tunnel used in Monday’s bomb attack in the northwestern province of Idlib extended more than 200 metres. A video posted online by Syria’s biggest rebel alliance, the Islamic Front, showed an enormous explosion that threw dust and debris dozens of metres up into the air.
In a related development, Human Rights Watch and a UN refugee agency both expressed concern that Lebanon was blocking Palestinians fleeing Syria from entering the country. UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said it was “concerned about the increased restrictions on Palestine refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria from entering Lebanon.”
Human Rights Watch accused Beirut of “arbitrarily” denying entry and documented the deportation of around 40 Palestinians accused of having forged documents. Beirut has not announced a blanket ban on the entry of Palestinians from Syria, but government sources confirm a general policy to keep out Palestinians fleeing the conflict. AFP
