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Syria: Opposition Drafts Declaration in Antalya<\/p><\/div>\n
Both were impressed by the constructive nature of the second day. George Washington was not born, they conceded, but hard decisions were made.<\/p>\n
The Muslim Brothers and Islamists were under intense pressure to accept the notion of a secular government where religion and state would be separate. They resisted this most of the day but ultimately conceded at the eleventh hour. We do not have the statement or wording on this “secular” statement. But the MB accepted to not contest the separation of state and religion in the conference statement. <\/span>I will publish as soon as I can get the wording of the conference statement.<\/p>\n According to some, Amr al-Azm (son of Sadiq) Amr Miqdad (presumably from the large Deraa family), and Muhammad al-Abdullah all played an important role in mediating and facilitating the discussion. They worked very hard to get the secular statement accepted.<\/p>\n The young guys were impressive. “Anyone in Damascus who doesn’t take these guys seriously is stupid,” my source explained. They are no where near where they should be, but for a first meeting this was impressive.” There were many arguments between the young, new leaders and the old, established leaders who have been in exile for decades. The young leaders had no patience for the committees and bureaucracy of the older generation. They are getting communication lines in place, developing networks between towns and did not have time for the endless haggling of the older generation.<\/p>\n About 70 Kurds showed up which surprised everyone. Also the number of tribal leaders was impressive. They were wearing heir dish dashers and kafiyyas.<\/p>\n “People have just had enough of being treated like shit. They want to be treated like real human beings – this was what it was all about,” one person explained. They have given up on talking with the regime. They don’t want the Assad family anymore.<\/p>\n Another important accomplishment<\/strong> was the establishment of an executive board<\/strong> and an election. They voted on a 31 member executive body, nine of whom will be full time. Two different lists of 31 people were presented, then they voted\u00a0 on which of the two lists would be picked. There was a lot of argument about who would be on the lists. It looks like they have agree on the people.<\/p>\n When the National Salvation Front was constructed in 2006, ex-V.P. Abdal Halim Khaddam waltzed in and took charge without a proper election. It was not a democratic opposition. At the very least, this opposition effort is proceeding by some sort of democratic procedure and there are elections.<\/p>\n Another aspect of the meeting that people liked was that the organizers of the conference excluded Farid Ghadary, Abdal Halim Khaddam, and Rifaat al-Assad because they are too tainted.\u00a0 The conference came out with a statement refusing foreign intervention and proclaiming the integrity and inviolability of Syria’s boarders. “Everything must be done to preserve Syria’s unity and territorial integrity,” their statement read.<\/p>\n “I want those people in Damascus to feel threatened,” said one friend. “This meeting is more impressive than anything the Baath has accomplished in the last 40 years. When have they ever had a real election? This is a start. There was a real young group of people working on the road to Damascus”<\/p>\n They issued a statement that Alawis should feel safe. No group would be targeted.<\/p>\n The Antalya group will start their own Facebook page tomorrow.<\/p>\n REBELS DEMAND HANDOVER OF POWER<\/a> – Financial Times<\/p>\n Syria\u2019s opposition has called on President Bashar al-Assad to resign immediately and hand over power to Farouk al-Sharaa, vice-president, to secure the country\u2019s transition to democracy, writes Abigail Fielding-Smith in Beirut.<\/p>\n Opposition members meeting in Turkey rejected foreign intervention in the effort to end Mr Assad\u2019s rule, and stressed the movement did not \u201caim to undermine any sect\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cThe delegates have committed to the demands of the Syrian people to bring down the regime and support the people\u2019s revolution for freedom and dignity,\u201d a statement issued by the conference said.<\/p>\n The conference \u2013 an unprecedented meeting of disparate activists from inside and outside Syria \u2013 also elected a 31-member consultative council to support the uprising, which started two and a half months ago.<\/p>\n Separately, Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, on Thursday called on the international community to take tougher action on the Syrian authorities\u2019 repression of the protests, urging countries to \u201cget on the right side of history\u201d.<\/p>\n Russia and China have objected to a draft UN Security Council resolution condemning the crackdown in Syria, which Human Rights Watch has said could have involved \u201ccrimes against humanity\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Syrian opposition tell Assad to quit immediately<\/a> Syrian opposition groups called Thursday for President Bashar al-Assad’s immediate resignation, in a joint declaration at the end of a two-day meeting in Turkey.<\/p>\n The statement, read out in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya, urged the “immediate resignation of President Bashar al-Assad from all functions he occupies.”<\/p>\n It urged the holding of “parliamentary and presidential elections within a period that will not exceed one year” following Assad’s resignation.<\/p>\n The dissidents vowed “to do whatever it is up to them to bring down the regime” in Syria, welcoming the declaration with applause.<\/p>\n Fears over crackdown<\/strong><\/p>\n UN genocide prevention experts warned the Syrian authorities Thursday over “apparently systematic and deliberate attacks” on unarmed civilians.<\/p>\n Putting new UN pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s regime over his crackdown, UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon’s special advisors on prevention of genocide and responsibility to protect civilian populations said they were “gravely concerned” at the growing death toll from the “violent suppression” of protests.<\/p>\n “We are particularly alarmed at the apparently systematic and deliberate attacks by police, military, and other security forces against unarmed civilians taking part in the last two months of protests,” said the advisors Francis Deng and Edward Luck.<\/p>\n “The systematic and widespread attacks that are alleged to have taken place in Syria appear primarily to have targeted the civilian population,” they said in a joint statement.<\/p>\n “This underscores the need for an independent, thorough, and objective investigation into all alleged violations of international human rights law,” the experts said.<\/p>\n Syria has refused to let a UN human rights mission into the country to investigate the crackdown which is said to have left hundreds dead. The UN Security Council is negotiating a resolution which would condemn the violence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Syria: Opposition Drafts Declaration in Antalya<\/a> Just a day after President Bashar Assad announced a general amnesty for political prisoners, a varied group of Syrian opposition members are meeting to create what one report referred to as a \u201c\u2018roadmap’ for a peaceful and democratic transition in Syria.\u201d The group is comprised mostly of exiles, including members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n Syrian-American academic Dr. Mohja Kahf, a professor at the University of Arkansas, is live-tweeting the event, which is taking place at a resort in Antalya, Turkey.<\/p>\n Syrians attend the Antalya conference, flanked by images of Syrian martyrs<\/p>\n Late Wednesday, she wrote of the event: \u201cAntalya:This is not your daddy’s old opposition conference #Syria New groupings forming, young faces,fresh energies.\u201d<\/p>\n Dr. Kahf also tweeted that the members of the meeting would be holding a day-long hunger strike in solidarity with their fellow Syrians.<\/p>\n Also on Twitter, @abulyas was quick to point out that the conference was not an \u201copposition conference,\u201d noting:<\/p>\n \u201c#Antalya conf isn’t \u201copposition\u201d conf. It brought many independent Syrians from the world united in purpose to end Syrian regime #march15?<\/p>\n Though the conference attendees are united in their cause, the conference has not been without its disagreements. Dr. Kahf noted a conversation she witnessed in the hotel lobby:<\/p>\n \u201cYounger generation that is carrying this rev:don’t care abt old lines of diffs:Ikhwan,secularists\u201d -lobby conversation Antalya conf #Syria.\u201d<\/p>\n An article in NOW! Lebanon notes a young\/old divide as well. There have also been reports that some Syrian opposition members refused to attend the conference, as well as some expressions of disappointment on Twitter from Syrians in the country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n LA Times –<\/a> — Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Cairo<\/p>\n Opposition leaders have been meeting for the past two days in Antalya, Turkey, to support the anti-government uprising in Syria. At the end of the conference Thursday, they issued their demands.<\/p>\n \u201cThe delegates have committed to the demands of the Syrian people to bring down the regime and support the people’s revolution for freedom and dignity,\u201d said the statement issued by 300 pro-democracy activists and opposition leaders.<\/p>\n On Thursday, as activists conducted workshops on social networking and drafted their demands in a resort hotel, scores of Assad supporters gathered outside, some wearing T-shirts featuring a picture of the embattled president.<\/p>\n \u201cWe love Bashar,\u201d they chanted on CNN.<\/p>\n Turkish police could be seen out in force in Antalya, ensuring that several hundred pro-government demonstrators could not reach the conference.<\/p>\n “What would post-Assad Syria look like? That’s the $50-million question,” Amr Al Azm, who helped draft the opposition statement, told CNN. \u201cWe’ve been able to begin to address what the alternative would like like … we’ve provided a road map,\u201d said Al Azm, a Syrian American history professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio who was in Turkey on Thursday.<\/p>\n He is an unlikely opposition leader. Until March, he was a senior consultant on a project headed by Assad’s wife, Asma, that was supposed to reform Syria’s culture ministry.<\/p>\n “What changed for me was the violence, the unprecedented level of violence that seemed random and almost uncontrolled,” Al Azm told CNN. “There are people that I actually know that have had their fingernails pulled out.”<\/p>\n Large anti-government protests were expected again in Syria on Friday after prayers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Protests close in on divided Damascus<\/a> In the affluent neighbourhoods of central Damascus, the crackdown on Syria\u2019s anti-government protests feels far away.<\/p>\n Young Damascenes sit in western-style caf\u00e9s in Shaalan, drink Italian coffee, smoke traditional water pipes and casually browse the internet on their laptops. \u201cThere is no problem here,\u201d is a common refrain among locals. \u201cIt will all be over in one or two months.\u201d<\/p>\n The centre of the Syrian capital has, along with the business city of Aleppo, remained relatively quiet in a more than two-month uprising against the regime of Bashar al-Assad, president.<\/p>\n Outside of Damascus, brutal attacks have escalated. Syrian forces killed at least 13 civilians in the town of Rastan on Thursday, human rights campaigners told Reuters, raising the death toll in the central province of Homs this week to at least 56 civilians.<\/p>\n Even within the relatively calm capital, signs of tension are everywhere.<\/p>\n Driving through the city\u2019s central Merjeh Square on a Friday, the usual day of pro-democracy protests, security men loiter on the street corners, dressed in riot gear and carrying batons. Plain-clothed intelligence men \u2013 the Mukhabarat \u2013 wait in buses with clubs and guns.<\/p>\n Others, drawn from the state\u2019s large civil service, are sent to the city\u2019s mosques to mix with worshippers and shout pro-regime slogans at the end of Friday prayers. More wait outside, ready to disperse any demonstrations as soon as they begin.<\/p>\n The regime is anxious to make sure protests do not spread to the capital. The middle classes and business community have benefited from the limited economic reforms introduced by Mr Assad since he took over in 2000 and still prefer stability, even if under a repressive regime.<\/p>\n \u201cThe regime knows that if they lose Damascus they are finished,\u201d says Samir, a 30-year-old protester in the capital, who speaks in hushed tones in a quiet caf\u00e9. Mobile phones are switched off in case they are bugged and suspicious glances are cast at men sitting on neighbouring tables.<\/p>\n But the regime may already be too late. Barely half a mile from the city centre, thousands of people have taken to the streets in the middle class district of Midan every Friday since early April. \u201cPeople from all walks of life and from all parts of the city are coming to Midan to protest,\u201d says Samir. Youths and middle class doctors mix with Midan locals, he says, and the crackdown elsewhere in the city means numbers in Midan are growing…..<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Business reluctant to cut loose from Assad<\/a> The Syrian business community\u2019s passive approach to the popular protest movement against the ruling Ba\u2019ath party is depriving the uprising of crucial support that could help secure the overthrow of the regime, analysts say.<\/p>\n Many assert that as long as businessmen in Aleppo and Damascus, the industrial and commercial hubs, do not join the opposition the regime will continue to believe it will survive with a brutal crackdown.<\/p>\n \u201cThe . . . business community has long been attached to the regime because there aren\u2019t lots of economic opportunities outside the government,\u201d said Marcus Marktanner, a professor of economics at the American University of Beirut.<\/p>\n The limited economic reforms introduced since Bashar al-Assad inherited power from his father in 2000 have not radically changed the socialist-style economy, burdened by a complex bureaucracy and laws unfriendly to foreign investment.<\/p>\n But businesses involved in textiles \u2013 the country\u2019s leading industry, two-thirds of which is based in Aleppo \u2013 food processing, car trading and electronics have benefited from government credits and trade privileges in recent years.<\/p>\n Lahcen Achy, a scholar at Carnegie Middle East Center, said the textile and garment sector had received government assistance. \u201cThey are now waiting to see what will happen and do not want to lose the regime support,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Analysts say the reforms have created an imbalance, leaving out rural areas and urban suburbs while a new wealthy class directly or indirectly linked to the regime has benefited.<\/p>\n The sense of deprivation has been exacerbated by an increase in global food prices and the country\u2019s severe drought which has shrunk the share of agriculture in gross domestic product from 24.2 per cent in 2006 to 17.1 per cent in 2010, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.<\/p>\n Some of the towns most hit by the drought have been bastions of pro- democracy protests, including Deraa in the south, Deir Ezzor in the east and Banias and Al-Hasakah in the north-east.<\/p>\n \u201cWith the increase in food prices, the Syrian emperor was seen naked,\u201d said Mr Marktanner. \u201cPeople who have serious problems in feeding their families know food prices won\u2019t go down and the regime cannot do anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Syrians have watched more overt signs of wealth appear in the capital and in Aleppo in the form of luxury cars and international clothing brands.<\/p>\n The business community has also been frustrated by the regime\u2019s intervention in economic activities and the Assad family\u2019s growing monopoly on big projects. One of the first places that protesters in Deraa, the flashpoint of unrest, burnt down was SyriaTel, the country\u2019s leading mobile telecommunications company run by Rami Makhlouf, a tycoon and cousin of the president.<\/p>\n But businessmen still appear to value the political stability that the Assad family has brought since the 1970s. The regime\u2019s argument that the alternative to secular rule will be Salafists, radical Sunni Muslims, seems to have worked well so far in keeping business in check.<\/p>\n \u201cSyrian businessmen think a fall of the regime in Syria is closer to the Libyan or Iraq scenarios than Tunisian or Egyptian scenarios while alternatives to the status quo remain unclear,\u201d said one analyst.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAFP, Thursday, June 02, 2011<\/p>\n
\nby Jillian York<\/p>\n
\nBy an FT reporter, June 2 2011 19:10 | Financial Times<\/p>\n
\nBy Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Beirut June 2 2011 20:05 | Financial Times<\/p>\n