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player ready...DOHA (Reuters) – Factions within Syria’s main overseas opposition group jostled for influence on Monday ahead of a push for unity to gain international support and, they hope, better weapons to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
Ahead of a meeting in Qatar on Thursday aimed at melding opposition groups based abroad with rebels fighting in Syria, the Syrian National Council (SNC) showed signs of internal rifts, putting the new initiative into doubt.
Thursday’s meeting will discuss a proposal by influential opposition figure Riad Seif to form a new, 50-member civilian group that will later chose a temporary government and coordinate with the military wing of the revolt – crucial for increasing foreign support for the uprising.
But members of the SNC are concerned the group will lose influence inside the new body and, at a four-day meeting in Doha ahead of Thursday’s talks, they sought to overhaul and broaden the body by expanding from around 300 up to 420 members.
SNC leaders said the changes meant the council now included more political and revolutionary groups, but critics said little had actually changed.
“Overhauling the council was not done properly. They just removed some names to settle old scores and brought in others who are their supporters. There are many factions that were not included,” a Syrian opposition source told Reuters.
The SNC, which seeks 22 of the 50 seats in the proposed assembly, will elect a new executive committee and leader on Tuesday.
“There is a fear inside the SNC that it might lose its size and influence if they agreed to the initiative and that would mean starting from square one,” a Doha-based diplomat said.
The SNC has come under domestic and international criticism as being under-representative of activists on the ground and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said last week it was time to move beyond the SNC and bring in those “in the front lines fighting and dying” – a blow to the group which has been among the most vocal proponents of international intervention in the Syrian conflict.
Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have thwarted prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers keen to see Assad gone from offering more than moral support.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim called on the Syrian opposition to unite.
“There is a proposal by Riad Seif which is a good proposal, but its not (up to) us to have to say if we supported or liked it,” he said. “What we are supporting (is that) they have to come with a solution out of this meeting in Doha.”
(Additional reporting by Aaron Maasho in Addis Ababa; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)