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Damascus denies promise to release seven dissidents

The Syrian government denied on Tuesday that President Bashar al-Assad had promised to release seven dissidents who were jailed after trying to re-organize a democratic movement targeted by security.

Two US lawmakers said Assad made the pledge at a meeting with them last week during which they urged Assad to halt a campaign against political activists and contemplate democratic reform to the no-opposition creed of the ruling Baath Party.

The official news agency said human rights were not even discussed during the meeting with Representative Patrick Kennedy and Senator Arlen Specter in the Syrian capital.

"No one is allowed to interfere in Syrian internal affairs. A senior information official has denied that the issue of some prisoners was talked about," the agency said.

The seven dissidents were arrested last month after attending a meeting at the house of leading opposition figure Riad Seif to revive the Damascus Declaration.

Signed by liberal parties in 2005, the declaration demanded democracy, the lifting of restrictions on public freedoms and abolition of emergency law, which has governed Syria since 1963, when the Baath Party took power in a coup.

Kennedy told journalists after meeting Assad that human rights were a universal issue.

He touted Seif as an example of courage and said he will nominate him for a prestigious prize named after his uncle Robert Kennedy, the former senator and attorney general who was assassinated in 1968.

The forceful mention of human rights and the public praise Kennedy heaped on Seif was virtually unheard of in tightly controlled Syria.

Meanwhile, Syria has released six Kurds detained for nearly two months over protests against Turkey's threat to strike Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, a human rights group said Tuesday.

The six were released on Monday by a criminal court in the province of al-Hasaka, northeast of Damascus, the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria, or NOHR, said in a statement.

They had been detained, along with 20 other Kurds on Nov. 2 for participating in a sit-in protest against Turkey's plans to attack Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.
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