http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/05/2013525101221796276.html
Discord bogs down Syrian opposition talks
Meeting for a third day in Istanbul, Syrian National Coalition fails to
agree on expanding to include more factions.
Last Modified: 25 May 2013 17:34
Syria's opposition factions, struggling under Western and Arab pressure
to close their ranks and elect a viable leadership, have resumed talks in
Turkey for a final day aimed at creating a coherent front crucial to a proposed
international peace conference.
The failure of the Syrian National Coalition to alter its
Islamist-dominated membership as demanded by its international backers and
replace a leadership undermined by power struggles, appears to be playing into
the hands of President Bashar al-Assad.
By Saturday night, the factions locked themeselves up in a room, trying
to find a way to work together.
And while they continued their discussions behind closed doors, fighting
continues inside Syria in Qusayr, where heavy bombardment has been going on for
days.
Interim opposition leader George Sabra spoke at a press conference in
Istanbul on Saturday, when he took a harsh tone with Hezbollah as well as Iran.
"Thousands of invaders from the Iranian forces and the terrorists of
Hezbollah are still coming to Syria and still killing our people," said Sabra.
"The killers are blockading, shelling and trying to storm several
cities...they are, with the participation of the falling Syrian regime, killing
Syrians in so many locations, in all governorates," said Sabra.
Meanwhile, in a speech on Saturday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on
Saturday vowed "victory" in Syria, where militants of his powerful Lebanese
Shia movement are fighting alongside regular troops against rebels trying to
topple
the regime.
"I say to all the honourable people, to the mujahedeen, to the heroes: I
have always promised you a victory and now I pledge to you a new one" in Syria,
he said at a ceremony marking the 13th anniversary of Israel's military
withdrawal from Lebanon.
Government forces are attacking a key town as Assad's ally Russia says he
will send representatives to a proposed international conference in the Swiss
city of Geneva, coalition insiders said.
Stagnate meeting
After two days of meetings in Istanbul, senior coalition players were in
discussions late into the night on Friday after Michel Kilo, a veteran liberal
opposition figure, rejected a deal by Mustafa al-Sabbagh, a Syrian businessman
who is the coalition's secretary-general, to admit some members of Kilo's bloc
to the coalition, the sources said.
Kilo has said that his group wants significant representation in the
opposition coalition before it will join.
Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelberra, reporting from Istanbul, said: "Kilo is
ready to join but his list includes 25 people in a take or leave offer.
"The problem with the opposition is that if they add the group of
secularists into the general committee, they will have a veto power, and right
now the current opposition thinks the secularists have been very soft on Assad,
and they might undermine the hardliners and the Islamists."
He went on to say "this is why you see a lot of political bickering here
in Istanbul" because the opposition "has always been a loose umbrella of
disparate factions".
Much to the frustration of its backers, the coalition has struggled to
agree on a leader since the resignation in March of Moaz al-Khatib, a former
Damascus religious leader, who had floated two initiatives for Assad to leave
power peacefully.
Khatib's latest proposal, a 16-point plan that sees Assad handing power
to his deputy or prime minister and then going abroad with 500 members of his
entourage, won little support in Istanbul, highlighting the obstacles to wider
negotiations.
"He has the right to submit papers to the meeting like any other member,
but his paper is heading directly to the dustbin of history. It is a repeat of
his previous initiative, which went nowhere," a senior coalition official said.
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