BEIRUT: Officials from two of Syria’s leading opposition groups had their own response to the launch of “consultative” meetings in the Russian capital Monday.
The president of the National Coalition, Khaled Khoja, paid a visit to rebel-held parts of President Bashar Assad’s home province of Latakia in what appeared to be a jab at the regime.
A statement issued by the coalition said Khoja discussed the latest military developments in the war with local rebel commanders and was accompanied by Col. Salim Idriss, an army defector who serves as the defense minister in the opposition’s interim government.
“We can’t sit down with the murderous Assad regime at a dialogue table. The only relationship between us is one of negotiations, over establishing a transitional ruling body with full powers, with no room for Assad or his security agencies,” Khoja said.
Khoja called the Moscow meetings a waste of time because they were not being held on the basis of the Geneva communiqué of 2012, which stipulates the formation of a fully empowered transitional authority.
However, members of the Coalition are attending the Moscow talks, in their private capacities, as are members of the National Coordination Body, the chief opposition group based inside Syria. Both groups objected to the fact that Moscow issued invitations to individuals in their private capacities, and not as members of political parties.
In Damascus, members of the NCB held a symbolic protest at the group’s headquarters and issued a statement blasting the decision by their colleagues to attend.
“We reject Russia’s obvious attempts to rehabilitate the regime and abort the process of negotiation based on the Geneva communiqué, and deliberate attempts to sabotage the unity of the opposition,” the objecting members said.
They said the NCB’s leadership had in effect OK’d the participation by some members in the Moscow meetings, if they chose, which violated the group’s earlier stances.
“We would like to recall the historic position taken on Jan. 6, 2014, which held that ‘fighting terror is impossible in the presence of a dictatorship,” they said.
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