Syrian opposition leaders met in Turkey on Friday in a bid to settle their differences and forge a united front to confront the escalating civil conflict in their homeland.
“We will work toward a unified vision,” said Burhan Ghalioun, who stepped down last month as head of the main opposition group the Syrian National Council (SNC), as mounting splits undermined its credibility.
The Istanbul meeting includes almost all opposition factions, while representatives from several Arab and Western countries were present as observers, along with a representative of international Syria envoy Kofi Annan.
The SNC has been criticized for failing to represent Syria’s array of ethnic and religious groups including Arabs, Kurds, Sunni Muslims, Alawites, Christians, Druze and others, and for not communicating with the grassroots on the ground.
“We are here to define a common position,” SNC head of foreign relations Bassma Qodmani said. “There are not many more points of difference between us now.”
Last Sunday, the SNC appointed Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda as its new leader. He has pledged to embrace all groups to win a broader appeal.
The only major absentee at the meeting on Friday was the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, a large group of Arabs, Kurds and socialists, which said “technical problems” prevented it from attending, other participants said.
However, some factions remain suspicious about the prospects for change under the new SNC leadership, which is the main umbrella group opposing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Activists had accused Ghalioun of ignoring the Local Coordination Committees, which spearhead anti-government protests on the ground in Syria, and of giving the Muslim Brotherhood too big a role.
UN officials have said Syria is now embroiled in full-scale civil war, with activists saying more than 14,400 people have been killed since anti-regime protests erupted in March last year, prompting a bloody crackdown by al-Assad’s forces.
“I am not optimistic about the result ... The people are fighting Bashar al-Assad because they need a democratic country, freedom, not just to replace [al-]Assad with Ghalioun or Sayda,” National Movement for Change head Ammar Qurabi said.
“The revolution deserves better than this opposition,” Qarubi told reporters.
Among the international observers in Istanbul, France and the US were represented by their ambassadors to Damascus, who were recalled in November last year in protest at the violence at the hands of the regime.
Britain, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates also sent senior diplomats.
Friday’s meeting came ahead of a planned major conference organized by opposition groups in Cairo under the auspices of the Arab League, at a date to be announced.
Toward the end of the day, some participants reported progress in the talks.
“We feel a dynamic is taking hold,” one Syrian opposition participant said on condition of anonymity. “There are always people who need to oppose everything, but there are still things that are moving forward.”
The talks were scheduled to continue into the evening and resume yesterday.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the