Syrian National Council President George Sabra walks in a hotel lobby to attend the opposition meeting in Istanbul yesterday. SNC said it will not take part in proposed US-Russia peace talks.
ISTANBUL: Syria’s opposition, under pressure to broaden its Islamist-dominated leadership, struggled to overcome deep rifts yesterday and form a united front for a proposed international conference to try to end the Syrian war.
Delegates at talks in Istanbul agreed to add 14 members of a liberal bloc led by veteran figure Michel Kilo to the 60-member assembly of the Syrian National Coalition, the closest body that Assad’s foes have to an overall civilian leadership in the two-year-old uprising against President Bashar Al Assad.
That partial breakthrough followed seven days of talks and required the intervention of Turkey and Western and Arab nations. They fear that unless deep fissures in the opposition ranks are healed, the chances of a successful Geneva peace conference soon, sponsored by Russia and the United States, are slight.
But many hurdles remain in the process to choose new leaders for a coalition that has been rudderless since March and to name a provisional government that could strengthen what are now weak links with rebel units inside Syria.
The coalition is controlled by the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and a faction loyal to Mustafa Al Sabbagh. The announcement would give Kilo’s bloc 14 seats, short of the 25 he had demanded, and also add more allies of Sabbagh’s and other factions to the assembly. It has yet to be finalised. Kilo sounded optimistic. “We have reached an agreement. I think we need some time to prepare before we embark on the leadership selection process,” he said.
But a formal vote to approve Kilo’s bloc entry was delayed and negotiations stretched into another night. A member of the Sabbagh bloc said: “Internal procedures must be respected and Kilo cannot be allowed to shove his way into the coalition.”
Sabbagh and Kilo are also negotiating the admission of 14 other members of activists’ groups inside Syria and finding a neutral mechanism to choose them. Agreement has yet to be reached on Free Syrian Army demands to be represented in the coalition, coalition sources said. Lebanese Shia guerrillas from Iranian-backed Hezbollah are openly fighting alongside government forces in Syria.
Kilo, a multi-lingual, soft-spoken former political prisoner, came out of the meeting room accompanied by a senior official of the Muslim Brotherhood, which lent de facto support to Kilo in the haggling over the expansion of the assembly.
Kamal Al Labwani, a maverick member of the coalition, said a rapprochement between the liberal and Islamist wing of the opposition could help it undercut Russian attempts to have figures among the representatives of the opposition at Geneva who are willing to allow Assad to stay in power.
“It is very dangerous to allow an opposition delegation to go to Geneva without sticking to the goals of the revolution, or accept an early ceasefire under the excuse that the people are tired, without guarantees that the regime will depart,” Labwani said. “An incomplete peace that awards a de facto pardon to Bashar and his cohorts will be far more costly than a continuation of the war.”
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels under siege near the Lebanese border pleaded for help yesterday against government troops and their Hezbollah allies as a confident Assad spoke of having new Russian missiles.
Though Moscow contradicted suggestions he had taken delivery of an entire, long-range S-300 anti-aircraft system which alarms Israel, Russia’s plan to send them highlighted the international confrontation brewing over Syria, even as Moscow and Washington work together for a peace conference between the warring sides.
With Iran and its Lebanese partner Hezbollah also rallying to Assad’s defence and his Western-backed Syrian opponents mired in squabbles, the president was quoted sounding confident of his position at home and abroad. He would attend talks in Geneva, he said, but he expected to keep fighting the revolt.
Among his enemies on the battlefield, rebels in the besieged border town of Qusair warned that it could be wiped off the map and hundreds of their wounded might die if no help came soon.
Harsh words from Moscow against the Syrian opposition’s insistence on Assad’s removal as a precondition for talks, and Russian criticism of Washington for considering a no-fly zone to help the rebels, underlined the geopolitical stakes in the war.
Russia scoffed at the opposition’s demands for a deadline to secure the president’s removal as a condition for them attending the talks. Russian, US and UN officials will hold a planning meeting next Wednesday.
Reuters
