EU welcomes creation of new Syrian opposition council

The security forces in one of the Syrian cities The European Union on Monday welcomed the creation of an opposition council in Syria, but stopped short of any call to recognise the body which is seeking international support for a six-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. A statement agreed by EU foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg welcomed the moves by the political opposition in Syria to establish a united platform and called on the international community also to welcome these efforts. "...The EU notes the creation of the Syrian National Council as a positive step forward," the statement said. Syria threatened on Sunday to retaliate against any country that formally recognised the opposition council.
While formation of the council has already been welcomed by some of Assad's Western critics, including the United States and France, they have not embraced it diplomatically as they did the Libyan rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. EU ministers and officials said any such moves, which would have to come from individual countries, were some way off. "I think we will have to find out a bit more yet," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said before the meeting. "We need to find out more and decide what we are going to do." "I think we have been consistent in wanting to see significant change in Syria. The number of people who have died there is terrible. The continued approach of the government to repress people is awful. We've been working closely with our colleagues in the (United Nations) Security Council and with Turkey now in trying to put the pressure on."
The United Nations says 2,900 people have been killed in Assad's crackdown on mainly peaceful protests. The Syrian leadership blames armed groups backed by foreign powers for the violence, saying 1,100 members of the security forces have been killed since the unrest broke out in March.
Violence must stop
British Foreign Secretary William Hague did not directly reply when asked if EU states should recognise the council, but said he had met some opposition activists and continued to call on the government to end the violence. "That is the immediate priority," he said. "The EU as a whole and member states will want to appeal for (an end to violence). Of course we can't directly intervene." French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said France wanted to have contacts with the opposition, adding: "We are pleased to see the opposition has organised." Asked about recognising the council, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said: "We are talking to them, as we are talking to a lot of other people who have the ability to influence events in Syria. We will be discussing that further today."
Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said the EU should do everything in terms of sanctions to force Assad to step down. "We know that the sanctions up until now on the part of the European Union are working," he said. "We think that if that is the case we should look for more sanctions and especially for a rigorous implementation of the sanctions at hand." Officials and diplomats said a committee was expected on Monday to endorse an agreement in principle to add the Commercial Bank of Syria to a sanctions list, which would bar Europeans from doing business with it and freeze its assets in Europe once the move is adopted later in the week. EU officials say the aim, combined with already adopted sanctions on Syria's oil industry, is to block the government's access to funds, but the effect has been blunted by the decision by Russia and China to block a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution that could have led to broader sanctions.
More than 30 people were killed in clashes across Syria, including 14 civilians and 17 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday, as army forces continued to pound the cities of Homs and Qamishli. Seven of the 14 civilians killed on Sunday were gunned down by security forces in the central city of Homs, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that seven others were killed in other towns. Seventeen security personnel died the same day in clashes with mutinous troops refusing orders to shoot on anti-regime protesters, the watchdog said. “It was like a war scene in Homs, where blasts and sound bombs were heard all over town, with heavy machine guns also being fired,” said officials with the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), which organizes protests on the ground. “A lot of homes were destroyed. Nine people were killed and dozens wounded. Security agents and pro-regime militias prevented ambulances from evacuating the wounded,” the officials said.
It said the regime “attacked the Homs region in yet another desperate effort to make its free residents bow and to snuff out the revolution.”
Activists said Army forces pounded Qamishli through the night on Sunday. The city was the scene of a mass rally on Saturday against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad during the funeral of Mishaal Tammo.
Gunmen shot Tammo, a Kurdish opposition figure, dead on Friday in his home in the east of the country, activists said. A Syrian army defector, meanwhile, has called for military aid to help his armed opposition group topple the Damascus regime. Colonel Riad al-Assad, who defected in July, appealed for weapons for an armed opposition group he set up called the “Syrian Free Army.” But he rejected any direct foreign military intervention in Syria. His statements
were published by the English-language Hurriyet Daily News on Monday. “If the international community helps us, then we can do it, but we are sure the struggle will be more difficult without arms,” he said. But he added that “nobody is in favor of any foreign country’s intervention into Syria.”
Col. Assad defected from the Syrian Air Force in July and is currently staying at a refugee camp in Turkey’s Hatay province, home to around 7,500 Syrians who fled the violence. He said he was in touch with the Syrian National Council, an opposition bloc set up during talks in Istanbul last month to unite opponents of Assad’s regime.
The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is expected to soon announce sanctions against Damascus in protest against the five-month crackdown, which according to the U.N. has claimed the lives of as many as 3,000 people.
The SNC groups the LCC, an activist network spurring protests in Syria, and the long-banned Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Kurdish and Assyrian groups.
A group of Syrians opposed to President Bashar al-Assad have created an alliance of technocrats to help fill a void of expertise within the opposition and lay out a roadmap for Syria once its current leadership falls, a founder said on Monday. Set up by U.S.-based doctor and activist Ayham Haddad and the owner of Orient TV Ghassan Abboud, the Syrian Alliance for Democracy was born out of frustration at the slowness in forming a structured opposition. It is made up from a mix of Syrians abroad, exiles, and professionals who never left the country –which is now in its seventh month of a violent crackdown by Assad’s government on pro-democracy unrest. “The Syrian opposition could not form an organization to represent the people and still disagree (among themselves),” Haddad, who left Syria in 1992 after being held for three years for belonging to a banned party, told Reuters in Paris. “There are a lot of political games, so we thought about how technocrats and professionals could help deal with the crisis because they are independent from the political parties.”
A broad opposition grouping under the banner of the National Council formed earlier this month, bringing in academics, grassroots activists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Damascus Declaration.
It wants to be recognized internationally as representative of those who are ranged against Assad, but continues to face criticism over its ability to unite all strands of the opposition both inside and outside the country.
Abboud’s television station was taken off the air in Damascus in July but has resumed broadcasting from the United Arab Emirates.
He said the alliance was not competing with the Council, but wanted to bring neutral technocrats from everywhere into the fold where they offer professional expertise on how to coordinate at present and in the future.
“We respect all the efforts made in Istanbul and elsewhere to unify the opposition, but this Council must have the will of the people inside Syria and clarify its position,” Abboud said. “For now, everyone has the common goal that the regime must fall, but the political parties are not ready to lead the country after the regime falls.”
The alliance says it has support from various parties, representatives of committees in Syria and the Damascus Declaration to press ahead with its initiative. It says it has about 60 technocrats working for it ranging from lawyers, scientists, economists, former diplomats and even currently serving military officials.
“In the transition period, we’ll need people to deal with our real problems ... health, education, the military as we now have people armed on the streets. We need to deal with these issues and cannot let immature guys throw slogans left and right,” Haddad said.
The assassination of Kurdish opposition figure Meshaal Tamo is likely to push Kurds in Syria to take a more active role in the seven-month-old anti-regime uprising, analysts and activists believe. More involvement by the Kurds in the pro-democracy revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's regime that erupted in March "will have a huge impact on the situation in Syria", said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On Saturday, the funeral for Tamo -- who was gunned down the previous day in public in Qamishli in the north -- turned into a mass rally with more than 50,000 demonstrators calling for the fall of Assad's regime. Syrian security forces killed at least two people when they opened fire on the crowd at the funeral. Tamo's son and a fellow activist, Zahida Rashkilo of the Kurdish Future Party, were wounded in the attack that killed him. Demonstrations were held on Sunday in the Kurdish regions of Qamishli, Amuda, Derbasiyeh and Malkieh near the borders with Turkey and Iraq, according to activists who have called for more protests "for the torch of freedom."
A video posted on YouTube showed protesters in Amuda destroying a giant statue of Hafez al-Assad, the late father of the current president.
"The Kurds will not give up until the regime falls," Tamo's son Fares was quoted by Al-Jazeera satellite television channel as saying. The murder of Tamo, who was member of a newly formed opposition front the Syrian National Council (SNC), "will have a great impact on the Syrian revolt," said Kurdish journalist and activist Massud Akko, who lives in Norway. Tamo founded the liberal Kurdish Future Party, which considers Kurds to be an integral part of Syria, and had been recently released after three and a half years in prison.
His assassination, which sparked widespread international condemnation, was blamed by Damascus on a "terrorist" group. The United States has renewed its calls for Assad to step down immediately amid escalating violence against anti-regime protesters that the United Nations says has left nearly 3,000 people dead. Dozens of people have protested at Syrian embassies in Beirut, Berlin, Geneva, London and Vienna.
Syria's three million Kurds, who represent 10 percent of the country's population, demand recognition of their identity, a role in political life and "administrative autonomy," according to their leaders.
There are 12 banned secular Kurdish parties in Syria. The Kurdish Democratic Party in Syria, Yezidi Party and the Democratic Union, which is close to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), are the most influential. The Syrian authorities, who have long viewed the Kurds as a threat to Arab identity in the country, have tried to mollify the Kurds, announcing in April a decree granting citizenship to people of Kurdish origin who were deprived of it because of a 1962 census.
In a statement on Sunday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem described Tamo as a "martyr."
"The reason behind the assassination was to create sedition in the Hasaka governorate, which has remained during the crisis a model of harmony and coexistence," he said.