Syrian activists resist unification

Foreign backers seek streamlining. Syrian National Council rejects umbrella proposal.

DOHA, Qatar — The Syrian National Council, the largest anti-government coalition, resisted an initiative Saturday that would place all opponents of the government under one umbrella — a streamlining sought by foreign backers who fear that the bickering exile movements are being eclipsed by events on the battlegrounds in Syria.

“Nobody should be subsumed under anybody,” said George Sabra, the newly elected president of the council, opening his inaugural news conference here in a combative mood before heading into negotiations over the unification proposal.

“The SNC is older than this initiative or any other initiative, and it has a deep political and regional structure,” said Sabra, 65, a Christian and a veteran leftist dissident.

But a group of more than 50 activists — backed by the United States, Qatar and other foreign supporters of the uprising — have proposed creating a larger body that would include the council. It would effectively end the SNC’s failed efforts of more than a year to be recognized as the government in exile for all Syr- ians.

Called the Syrian National Initiative, the new group is aimed at incorporating virtually all opposition parties, internal councils and notable figures. Perhaps its two most important are creating both a unified military command and a group of technocrats who could guide aid and other support from outside Syria to those actually fighting against President Bashar Assad.

Foreign governments have sought this unification so that they too can better coordinate their aid efforts, rather than having every country picking its own favorites inside Syria, and allowing the overall effort to remain confused.

Some diplomats and other analysts suggested that the reorganization effort had been too hastily prepared, leaving the outcome dependent on endless bartering among the Syrians.

Ultimately, all the talks could well come down to haggling over the number of seats the council would receive on the new body. It would most likely get about 20 out of 60, but its members have suggested that they would not settle for less than 40 percent. The SNC negotiators’ opening gambit was to offer a series of counterproposals that would basically keep the council as a first among equals while also moving toward greater unity.

The council envisions a kind of “coordinating committee” underneath it that other groups would join to supervise the military, as well as a special fund that all foreign donors would finance to help distribute aid inside Syria.

“Let us not create a new body that will take time to be established — ours is already there,” said Louay Safi, a member of the SNC’s 41-member General Secretariat, an elected body that advises the executive committee. The main criticism of the SNC has been that it is driven by internal bickering and has failed to attract a wide variety of groups.