Syria’s main opposition has elected Ahmad Assi Jarba to lead the movement, which groups together opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, spokesman Khaled Saleh said.
The news came on Saturday in Istanbul, where the Syrian National Coalition is based, while on the ground in Syria fierce fighting continued as the army pressed forward with an assault on rebel-held districts.
Jarba, who represents the faction of veteran secular dissident Michel Kilo and who is seen as close to Saudi Arabia, obtained 55 votes in the deeply divided Syrian National Coalition on Saturday.
He edged out the group’s secretary general Mustafa al-Sabbagh, who obtained 52 votes in the second round of balloting at the group’s meeting in Istanbul.
The opposition had been rudderless since the departure in May of Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib in protest at the world’s “inaction” over Syria’s civil war.
The selection of a new chief had initially been mooted for the end of May, but had been postponed amid conflicting views on the future direction of the coalition and attempts by other countries in the region to influence the outcome.
In a short statement published after his election, Jarba said his “priority is to manage developments on the ground in Syria, particularly at Homs,” the central city which was suffering an eighth straight day of assault from al-Assad’s troops.
Among the rebels’ Western sympathizers, France was swift to congratulate Jarba on his win, saying that his election reinforced the coalition as “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.”
US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki later said: “The United States welcomes the July 6 election of Syrian Coalition President Ahmed Assi al-Jarba, and looks forward to working with him and with his team. “We hope to make progress together with President Jarba to prevent the total collapse of Syria into chaos and rebuild its social fabric.”
Psaki said the US was looking “to President Jarba and the new leaders to reach out to all Syrian communities and bring greater unity of purpose and further organization to the Syrian Coalition as the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people.”
She added: “A united opposition is essential to achieve a negotiated political solution in which Bashar al-Assad steps down, and a new transition government leads all Syrians to dignity, freedom and hope for the future.”
Born in 1969 in the northeastern city of Qamishli, on the border with Turkey, Jarba is a Sunni Muslim whose work for the opposition involved convincing Arab and Western nations to arm the rebels. In his work he is often seen in Western-style suit and tie, but several of his authorized photographs show him wearing the flowing robe, or abaya, of the Arab tribes.
During Saturday’s vote, the 114 members of the coalition also elected three vice presidents — Suheir Atassi, Mohammed Farouk Tayfur and Salim Muslit.
Badr Jamous was voted secretary general of the umbrella organization recognized by dozens of states and organizations as legitimately representing the Syrian people.
Meanwhile on the ground, troops loyal to al-Assad seized several buildings on the edges of rebel-held districts of Homs as they pressed an eight-day assault on the central Syrian city, activists said on Saturday.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said the army captured several buildings in Bab Hud in the city center.
Rebel-held areas of Homs have been under siege by the regime’s military for more than a year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema