ISTANBUL: The Syrian opposition coalition will appoint a provisional prime minister today to raise its international credibility as high-stakes diplomacy plays out between Washington and Moscow to resolve Syria’s two and a half year civil war, National Coalition officials said.
After a week of intense international negotiations that threatened to sideline the Western and Arab backed coalition in the wake of a nerve gas attack on Damascus that killed hundreds of people, coalition officials said they reached consensus that Ahmad Tumeh, an independent Islamist, will be appointed to run rebel-held areas where a decline into chaos threatens to undermine the opposition to President Bashar Al Assad.
“We will be appointing a new prime minister tomorrow. It will be the first item on the agenda,” coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh told reporters after the first day of a meeting of the 115-member coalition.
The coalition has struggled to form a coherent response to a Russian initiative that proposes Assad hands over the country’s massive chemical weapons arsenal in return for averting a threatened U.S.-led punitive strike.
“The Russian initiative is silent on the very first issue on ensuring accountability. Providing and reaching political solutions does not absolve the regime from the fact that it killed 1,466 innocent civilians,” Saleh said.
Coalition member Khaled Khoja said the opposition was still willing to enter into talks with the Assad government if the balance of military power was redressed.
“We are not against Geneva 2, but not under these conditions. The balance of power is not right now. What would restore it is either an air strike or weapons for the Free Syrian Army,” Khoja said, referring to more sophisticated anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
Selim Idris, the head of the Supreme Military Council, denied media reports that the first shipment of US-supplied weapons arrived in the past few weeks.
“We would like to know where these weapons are,” Idris said.
REUTERS
