Assad foes’ try at unity contentious on first day

Syrian girls who fled with their family from the violence in their village keep warm by the fire next to their tent at a camp Sunday in the Syrian village of Atma, near the Turkish border.
Syrian girls who fled with their family from the violence in their village keep warm by the fire next to their tent at a camp Sunday in the Syrian village of Atma, near the Turkish border.

— Sharp disagreements arose Sunday on the first day of a Syrian opposition conference meant to forge a more cohesive leadership that the international community says is necessary before it will boost its support for those trying to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

INTERACTIVE

Uprising in Syria

The main opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Council, balked at a U.S.-backed plan that would largely sideline it to make room in a new leadership council for fighters and activists inside Syria. However, with international pressure mounting, the council also suggested it is willing to negotiate a compromise that would give it more influence in a new leadership team.

The international community has long urged the Syrian National Council, widely seen as dysfunctional and out of touch, to broaden its base and include a greater spectrum of Syrian society, especially those fighting inside the country. Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was unusually harsh, suggesting the council’s leadership days are over.

Failure to reach a deal in Doha could further heighten tensions between Syria’s political opposition and the international community. Opposition leaders feel abandoned by the U.S. and other foreign backers, saying they are not providing the money and weapons the rebels need to defeat Assad in a stalemated civil war. Washington and others say they can’t step up aid unless the opposition stops bickering and establishes a more representative - and unified - leadership.

The conflict began nearly 20 months ago as a peaceful uprising that escalated into a civil war and has claimed more than 36,000 lives, according to a tally by activists.

At the conference in Doha, the Syrian National Council will have to decide whether to accept a plan proposed by a prominent dissident, Riad Seif, to set up a new leadership group of about 50 members. The council would get some 15 seats, meaning its influence would be diluted, while military commanders and local leaders in rebel-held areas would win wider representation.

Seif said his plan has broad international backing and portrayed it as a steppingstone to more robust foreign aid.

Syrian National Council chief Abdelbaset Sieda dismissed Seif’s optimism, saying he and others in the group no longer trust promises of international support that are linked to restructuring of the opposition.

“We faced this situation before, when we formed the SNC [last year],” he said. “There were promises like that, but the international community in fact did not give us the support needed for the SNC to do its job.”

The council is to decide Wednesday whether to accept Seif’s plan. Sieda said the group believes it deserves at least 40 percent of the seats, should it decide to join the new group, suggesting the group may have decided it’s under too much pressure to reject the plan entirely.

In Cairo, Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, but they differed in their assessments.

Brahimi called the situation “deplorable,” adding, “The solution will either be a political one that all sides agree on, or the future of Syria is very bad.”

Lavrov blamed the Syrian opposition for not accepting a cease-fire proposal that left the door open for a transitional period with Assad still in power.

The Arab League scheduled a special session of its Syria committee for next Monday.

As opposition leaders haggled in Qatar, activists said rebels firing mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades captured an oil field in eastern Syria on Sunday after three days of fighting with government troops, and shot down a Syrian warplane in the area. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels overran the Al-Ward oil field in the province of Deir el-Zour near Iraq. The Free Syrian Army killed, wounded or captured 40 guards at the oil field.

Activists said the rebels shot down a fighter jet near the oil field Sunday. It was not clear if the warplane was taking part in fighting in the area.

Oil was a major source of revenue for Assad’s regime before the U.S. and the European Union imposed an embargo on Syria’s crude exports last year, in response to Assad’s brutal crackdown on the uprising against him. Syrian officials have accused rebel units of targeting the country’s infrastructure, including blowing up the oil and gas pipelines.

Syrian state media, meanwhile, said rebels detonated a car bomb near the Dama Rose hotel in the capital, wounding several people. The hotel has been used in the past by U.N. observers visiting Syria. The reports also said rebels were behind the assassination of a leading member of the ruling Baath party in northeast Raqqa province.

The pro-government Ikhbariyeh TV said the explosives were planted under a car, parked in an outdoor lot near the country’s main labor union building. At least 12 people, all union members, were wounded by shattered glass, the organization’s chief, Mohammad Azouz, said.

The official Syrian news service blamed “terrorists,” its usual label for armed rebels seeking the overthrow of Assad.

The target of the attack was not immediately clear.

Rebels appear to be stepping up bomb attacks in and around the Syrian capital, Damascus, where a number of car bombings and other blasts have occurred in recent weeks. Syrian troops have pushed many armed rebels out of city neighborhoods and into outlying districts.

Elsewhere in Syria, activists said the army clashed with rebels in the northern cities of Idlib and Aleppo, as well as in Damascus and the southern border town of Daraa, where the uprising began.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it reached the neighborhoods of Khalidiya and Hamidiya in the old city of Homs on Saturday after negotiations with the government and rebels.

It said in a statement late Sunday that 34 foreign delegates and Syrian Arab Red Crescent officials were able to deliver medical aid to 100 wounded people.

Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Abdullah Rebhy, Barbara Surk, Bassem Mroue, Albert Aji, Albert Schreck and Aya Batrawy of The Associated Press; by Patrick J. McDonnell of the Los Angeles Times; and by Ladane Nasseri, Nayla Razzouk, Dahlia Kholaif and Robert Tuttle of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/05/2012

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