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SYRIA’S DIVIDED OPPOSITION finally agreed today to join an international peace conference, a day after Damascus offered concessions including a ceasefire plan for the battered city of Aleppo.
The exiled umbrella group the National Coalition voted at a meeting in Istanbul in favour of attending next week’s talks in the face of intense pressure from the West and Arab states.
The so-called Geneva II conference opening on Wednesday is aimed at setting up a transitional government to find a way out of the brutal conflict that has killed 130,000 people and made millions homeless since March 2011.
Damascus had already said it would attending, although the US Secretary of State John Kerry has accused the regime of diversionary tactics, saying “nobody is going to be fooled”.
The Coalition — a grouping of myriad organisations — had been locked in procedural disputes which delayed the decision by a day.
But in a secret ballot, it agreed by 58 votes to 14 with two abstentions and one blank vote to take part, according to an official tally.
Infighting
The opposition has long struggled to put forward a united front during the civil war, rocked by infighting over its leadership and efforts to form a government in exile.
And many members had been appalled at the idea of sitting down at the same table with representatives of the hated regime they have been trying to unseat for almost three years.
In a surprise move in Moscow yesterday, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem presented his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov with a security plan aimed at halting “all military actions” in the devastated northern city of Aleppo.
Muallem also said the regime was willing to swap prisoners with the rebels in the first such mass exchange since the conflict erupted, while Lavrov said Damascus was ready to take “a series of humanitarian steps” to improve the delivery of aid.
And today, food aid entered the besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus — where dozens of people are reported to have died of hunger and lack of medical care — for the first time in four months.
Syria, Muallem said, would “make every effort to ensure Geneva II is a success and meets the aspirations of the Syrian people and the direct orders of President Bashar al-Assad”.
But Kerry warned the regime it could not divert the peace talks away from the aim of installing a new government, after a letter from Muallem to the UN said Geneva was about getting rid of extremists in Syria.
‘Important opportunity will be missed’
“They can bluster, they can protest, they can put out distortions, the bottom line is we are going to Geneva to implement Geneva I, and if Assad doesn’t do that he will invite greater response,” he said.
Kerry also sought to allay opposition fears that the negotiations would somehow legitimise Assad’s regime and leave him in power, saying: “It’s not going to happen.”
Media reports have suggested that the United States and Britain are threatening to withdraw support from the opposition if it fails to send a delegation.
But factions within the Coalition — set up in its current form in November 2012 — have been wary of being drawn into a process they fear could result in Assad clinging to power.
“The goal of any political solution must be to install a government of transition that Assad will play no part in,” said Coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh.
The Coalition is beset by rivalries between groups backed by either Qatar or Saudi Arabia, while on the ground, more mainstream Islamist factions are battling Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists.
“If the Syrian opposition refuses to take part in Geneva II, an important opportunity will be missed,” a Turkish diplomat had said before the vote.
United Nations
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, pleaded for the world to ease the massive burden on countries sheltering the millions of refugees and to open their borders to those fleeing the war.
He was speaking at a meeting in Turkey on Friday of regional countries on the refugee crisis after the United Nations launched a massive $6.5-billion appeal for aid.
“For me it is unacceptable to see Syrian refugees drowning, dying in the Mediterranean or pushed back at some borders,” he said.
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Is it possible to talk peace with a bunch of head chopping,liver-eating fanatics?And what exactly is ‘mainstream Islamist’?
More propaganda.
Ask yourself some questions. What gives the US the right to determine what will or will not happen in Syria? Why is this position an assumed one in the Western corporate media. The US has been found spying on the UN and the rest of the world and is the head of the biggest terrorist operation in the world in the form of despotic stone strikes. The US has no moral high ground here.
Also, we know from a recent study by MIT and a UN weapons inspector that the Ghouta Chemical Attack could not have been launched by Syrian state security forces, that the rocket used is and was not in their arsenal yet this vital report was not covered in Western media.
The US is the one blustering by failing to provide any proof to its idiotic claims Re Syria.
Over 11,000 children dead as a result of the conflict shows how desperately needed peace is. We are all brothers and sisters. Religion and ideology should not blind us to that.
There should never be any negotiating with terrorists.
So now that there losing they want to talk ..
Where’s the proof that they’re losing? The government still hasn’t been able to root out rebel positions in Damascus, even after their chemical attacks.
There are a lot of question marks about who carried out those chemical attacks, even research from MIT disagrees with the American government viewpoint.
http://web.mit.edu/sts/Analysis%20of%20the%20UN%20Report%20on%20Syria%20CW.pdf
Assad is in full control of his country,three years into civil war, it speaks volumes for his support.
Long live President Assad, Victory to the Syrian Arab Army.
Assad isn’t even in control of the capital, never mind the whole country. If he was there wouldn’t be an ongoing war.
Indeed, John Kerry Cohen is right, nobody is fooled by John Kerry.
US General Wesley Clarke said in 2006 that the US had made the decision to remove Assads Govt. Russia’s Putin has, so far, prevented this. All other actors are of no real consequence. The cold was is far from over.
A damaged Syrian military tank?
Oh so a quick spray job and a valet will get her operational again will it lol
Assad will crush the rebels eventually, but not before he levels as many rebel town’s first. This is his only chance.
have your say