Madrid meeting exposes divisions in Syrian opposition
Opposition can only agree on refusal to negotiate with Assad

Andres Cala Asharq Al-Awsat Wednesday, 22 May, 2013
http://www.aawsat.net/2013/05/article55302831

Madrid, Asharq Al-Awsat—A two-day meeting of the Syrian opposition in Madrid
ended yesterday, with agreement on few issues except the refusal to
negotiate with a Syrian government led by Bashar Al-Assad.

The conference’s final resolution called on the international community to
ensure that Assad has “no role in the decisions taken regarding Syria’s
transition period or the future of the country.”

The divisions within the fractious opposition movement were obvious to
observers at the conference, prompting Syrian National Coalition (SNC)
interim president Moaz Al-Khatib to admit that the opposition’s biggest
challenge is its lack of unity.

“The revolution’s weakness is that it lacks a political brain,” said Khatib,
a former moderate imam of Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque.

“If we can’t overcome this, only one front of the conflict will be open: the
international front. We have to unite and coordinate ourselves to overcome
this weakness,” he told delegates in Arabic.

Khatib also condemned ties to Al-Qaeda held by some Syrian militias fighting
Assad, perhaps the biggest factor in the international community’s
reluctance to arm Syria’s rebels.

However, he also said he would be willing to negotiate with groups
associated with Al-Qaeda in order “to reorient them,” which is sure to raise
alarms in Western capitals that have demanded that the opposition break with
terrorist-affiliated militias.

Khatib resigned in March after being criticized for his perceived
willingness to negotiate with Assad, and is currently waiting for the
nomination of a new leader of the SNC. In Spain, he reiterated his
willingness to talk to the Syrian regime to end the war that has killed more
than 70,000 people and left more than 1.5 million displaced, as long as it
involves Assad stepping down.

The conference follows signals from the international community that it
expects Khatib and his followers to do more to unite into a cohesive and
credible opposition or risk being sidelined. Accordingly, the SNC and Khatib
were not invited to this week’s Friends of Syria conference in Jordan.

The results of this week’s opposition conference are likely to raise doubts
about the prospects for success of the international conference proposed for
June by Russia and the US, which is intended to seek a political solution to
the ongoing Syrian crisis.

The SNC will meet again in Turkey this week, and decide within the next two
weeks whether they will participate in proposed US- and Russian-brokered
talks that would include representatives of Assad’s regime.

However, if they continue to insist that Assad steps down as a precondition
for talks, it is unclear if the Syrian government will be willing to
negotiate in earnest.