Syria dialogue urged at Islamic summit

Friday, February 8, 2013

— Leaders at an Islamic meeting on Thursday urged a dialogue between the Syrian opposition and regime just as a new initiative for talks proposed by an anti-government leader appeared to be unraveling.

Like previous diplomatic initiatives on Syria, opposition chief Mouaz al-Khatib’s call for talks made less than a week ago appeared doomed. And with troops and rebels clashing for a second day around Damascus, frustrated Syrians dismissed the calls for dialogue as empty talk.

“All of this does not concern us,” said Iyad, a Syrian fighter on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus, which has witnessed heavy fighting in the past two days.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country is Syria’s closest ally in the Middle East, attended the summit and said at a news conference Thursday that he supported dialogue. He added that Egypt, Turkey and Iran were moving toward cooperation on Syria. But he also defended President Bashar Assad’s regime, warning against meddling in the domestic affairs of other countries.

The Syrian civil war is largely at a stalemate, with neither side making significant battlefield gains likely to bring about a military victory any time soon.

But the international community has been at a loss for ways to end the carnage, with neither side showing no real interest in a political settlement.

At the end of a two-day conference in Cairo, the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation urged Syrian opposition forces and members of the regime whose hands are not tainted by violence to hold talks on resolving the nearly 2-year-old conflict.

In the final statement of the conference, it called for concrete efforts to reach a settlement “that would preserve the rights of the Syrian people and ensure the unity and the safety of their land.”

The statement did not specifically refer to the recent dialogue offer by al-Khatib, who has said he would be willing to sit down with regime members on condition they release 160,000 political prisoners.

His offer sparked criticism from fellow opposition activists who say the regime has killed too many people to play a role in the conflict’s solution.

On Thursday, al-Khatib appeared to be backing away from the offer. He demanded that the regime release all female political prisoners by Sunday or he would scrap his initiative.

“The regime has until Sunday to begin releasing detainees, especially women. This should be the introduction of prisoners’ release,” he told BBC Arabic in an interview.

Al-Khatib’s offer followed meetings he had held separately with Russian, U.S. and Iranian officials on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich last weekend. Russia and Iran are Syria’s two closest allies.

The government has ignored his offer. But one lawmaker said the talks should be without preconditions.

Many of al-Khatib’s colleagues in the Syrian National Coalition say Assad must step down before there can be any negotiations.

Participants at the Cairo summit did not call on Assad to step down, but the meeting exposed conflicting views among Muslim and Arab nations about the Syrian civil war. At past summits, many nations, including Egypt, demanded that Assad go.

Egypt’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, elected after an uprising ousted his authoritarian predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, sharply criticized Assad’s embattled regime in his address to the summit. But he did not directly call for him to go as he had in the past.

The fighting in Damascus subsided significantly on Thursday, a day after the heaviest clashes in months.

Clashes were inching closer to the heart of the city, but still were focused in outlying neighborhoods such as Qaboun, Jobar and Zamalka in the northeast. Government troops beat back rebels who had tried to take over Jobar.

Fighters in rebellious suburbs of Damascus have made several attempts to overrun the heavily guarded center of the city, but failed. As in other parts of the country, the fighting has reached a stalemate.

Meanwhile, Syria’s U.N. ambassador says there is “no truth” to reports that an Israeli airstrike last week that seriously damaged a scientific research center had targeted a convoy heading to neighboring Lebanon.

Israel has all but confirmed it was behind the Jan. 30 airstrike a few miles from Damascus. U.S. officials said the Israelis struck a military research center and a convoy next to it carrying anti-aircraft weapons destined for the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said in identical letters to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council dated Jan. 31, and circulated Thursday, that Israeli aircraft flying at low altitude to avoid radar headed to the research center in Jamraya, Rif Dimashq, and bombed it, killing two employees and injuring five others. They returned by the same route over an area north of Mount Herman, he said.

In other developments, an international human-rights group said Lebanon has failed to enact political changes to curb human-rights abuses, promote women’s rights, and protect migrants and refugees as the country grapples with spillover effects from civil war in neighboring Syria.

Human Rights Watch hailed the Lebanese government for keeping its borders open for tens of thousands of Syrians who fled their homes because of fighting between rebels and government troops. However, the U.S.-based group called on authorities to do more to protect refugees from being detained by security services or deported despite a risk of persecution by the Syrian regime.

Information for this article was contributed by Edith M. Lederer and Barbara Surk of The Associ-

Front Section, Pages 5 on 02/08/2013