Activist calls for defections
DAMASCUS: The new head of Syria’s main opposition group has called for mass defections from a regime he says is “on its last legs” after a series of massacres, as the death toll in the uprising tops 14 000.
Similar calls were made by the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), which also urged a campaign of mass “civil disobedience” to ratchet up internal pressure on President Bashar al-Assad’s beleaguered regime.
“We are entering a sensitive phase. The regime is on its last legs,” Kurdish activist Abdel Basset Sayda said yesterday shortly after being named the new leader of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC).
“The multiplying massacres and shellings show that it is struggling,” he said of mass deaths of civilians, the most recent of which saw 20 people, mostly women and children, killed in a bombardment of the southern city of Dara’a on Saturday. The latest deaths bring to more than 14 100 the number of people killed since March last year.
Sayda called on all members of the Damascus regime to defect, while reaching out to minority groups by promising them a full say in a future, democratic Syria.
“We call upon all officials in the regime and in the institutions to defect from the regime,” Sayda told reporters in Istanbul.
The FSA, meanwhile, called for a campaign of civil disobe- dience and urged officers and troops in Assad’s military to jump ship and join the rebel ranks.
“We call on Syrians to launch a general strike leading to mass civil disobedience,” FSA spokesman in Syria Colonel Kassem Saadeddine said in a statement.
Sayda, 55, has lived in exile in Sweden for two decades and is seen as a consensus candidate capable of reconciling the rival factions within the SNC and of broadening its appeal among Syria’s myriad ethnic and confessional groups.
He is not in any political party, and SNC officials call him a “conciliatory” figure, “honest” and “independent”. – Sapa-AFP CAIRO: Egyptian liberals have walked out of a meeting to select members of a panel to write the country’s new constitution, charging that Islamists were trying to take seats allocated for secular parties.
The walkout could throw the writing of the constitution, which would lay out the powers of the presidency, into further disarray at a time when uncer- tainties mar both the course of the presidential run-off election on June 16-17 and the legality of parliament.
The dispute was part of the turmoil Egypt has undergone since the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak. Protesters have been killed in battles with the military, and an Islamist-majority parliament elected last year has upset liberals. – Sapa-AP