TURKEY: Opposition Syrian National Council kicks off meeting to draw up its own road map as it discusses change of leadership

Record ID: 276311

  • Title: TURKEY: Opposition Syrian National Council kicks off meeting to draw up its own road map as it discusses change of leadership
  • Date: 10th January 2012
  • Summary: ISTANBUL, TURKEY (JANUARY 9, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF MEMBERS OF SYRIAN OPPOSITION IN LOBBY MEMBER OF SYRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL ANAS ABDA WALKING PAST CAMERA (SOUNDBITE) (English) MEMBER OF SYRIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL ANAS ABDA SAYING: "The current tendency within the council is to apply the router principle and to basically change the presidency but we might give the curr
  • Embargoed: 25th January 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Turkey, Turkey
  • Country: Turkey
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAB4RLDVUTINRN4SN8GBJDCNAJQ
  • Story Text: Members of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) held a meeting in Turkey on Monday (January 9) to draft their own road map for change amid considerations about replacing their leader after the collapse of a deal with another Syrian opposition group.
    "The current tendency within the council is to apply the router principle and to basically change the presidency but we might give the current presidency, you know, three or four weeks in order to agree within our council a certain candidate," a member of the council, Anas Abda said.
    Ten days ago Burhan Ghalioun, head of the mostly exiled SNC, signed an accord with the mainly Syrian-based National Coordination Body (NCB) outlining a transition to a democratic Syria, should President Bashar al-Assad's be ousted from power.
    The agreement rejected "any military intervention that harms the sovereignty or stability of the country", while leaving the door open for an Arab role to stop Assad's military crackdown on protests in which 5,000 people have died, by a U.N. count.
    But members of Ghalioun's own council denounced the deal, forcing him to disavow it. Many grassroots protesters inside Syria also rejected it, saying they had lost hope that 10 months of peaceful demonstrations - now accompanied by an armed insurgency in some regions - would bring down Assad.
    "He agreed with the NCB not to publish and not to leak this document until he gets the approval for it at the executive and secretary general level. However they did go ahead and leaked this document. This put Mr. Ghalioun in a very difficult position. He made it very clear to everybody that that was the agreement but in our view maybe he should not have signed the document anyway," Anas Abda said.
    Spokeswoman for the SNC Basma Qadmani said the agreement will be on the table during the meeting in Istanbul.
    "There is a text which is not fully approved in all its components by the council. It is going to be rediscussed and modified, there will be amendments, there will be changes to that text and it will be proposed again and with this text we will go to prepare for the conference at the Arab League," she said.
    The NCB rejects foreign intervention, seeking instead a political agreement for a transitional government to replace Assad, a path it says would save Syria from disintegrating along sectarian and ethnic lines.
    Qadmani stressed the disagreement is organisational, not political, and stems from difference of opinions on the roles of two opposition groups in forming a transitional government.
    "The difference is not so much on the political positions. We have agreed on a joint formulation on what foreign intervention means and how it should come about if it were to come about. The main difference is more from the organisational side. We have a political platform together but where do we go from there. They wish to see a different entity and the Syrian National Council is not considering any change in that matter," Qadmani said.
    A growing clamour among Syrian activists for foreign intervention to topple Assad is emerging from the demise of the deal between two leading opposition groups that ruled out international action.
    But in exposing the enduring divisions among Assad's adversaries, the collapse of the pact ensured their goal of foreign support would remain elusive since Western powers are reluctant to throw their weight behind a fractured opposition.
    Wary of the risks of engendering chaos and wider Middle East conflict given Syria's internal sectarian divisions and Assad's alliance with Iran, NATO says it has no plans to intervene as it did to back Libyan rebels who toppled Muammar Gaddafi last year.
    And Turkey, Syria's neighbour and Assad's former ally, has said any intervention must be backed by the U.N. Security Council with Arab League support, must be justified on humanitarian grounds and not have regime change as its goal.
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