Syrian Opposition Conference: Scuffle, Fistfight Field
Earlier, the so-called Free Syrian Army refrained from attending the conference.
A meeting of Syria's splintered opposition in Cairo descended into scuffles and fistfights on Tuesday that dealt another blow to Western efforts to produce a unified front against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The meeting also failed to resolve many of the differences between the rival Syrian opposition groups. This undermined all Western-Arab failing attempts to find an alternative to Al-Assad.
"This is so sad. It will have a bad implications for all parties. It will make the Syrian opposition look bad and demoralize the protesters on the ground," opposition activist Gawad al-Khatib said.
A Syrian Kurdish group quit the meeting, provoking mayhem and cries of "scandal, scandal" from delegates. Women wept as men traded blows, and staff of the hotel used for the meeting hurriedly removed tables and chairs as the scuffles spread.
"We will not return to the conference and that is our final line. We are a people as we have language and religion and that is what defines a people," said Morshed Mashouk, a leading member of the Kurdish group which walked out.
"The Kurds withdrew because the conference rejected an item that says the Kurdish people must be recognized," said Abdel Aziz Othman of the National Kurdish Council. "This is unfair and we will no longer accept to be marginalized."
The outburst lasted only a few minutes.
When one Kurd screamed, "Nothing has changed, we need to be listened to" as he walked out of the conference room, in front of cameras, a young activist followed him shouting: "This is a faked withdrawal seeking to make the conference fail."
An official from the meeting's host, the Arab League, who attended the closed meetings, said of the opposition group: "They are so different, chaotic and hate each other."
Opposition leader Haitham al-Manna of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change (NCB) told Reuters that "one of the points of disagreement was over authorities to be granted to a committee to act as a face of the opposition."
A draft document, put together by a 16-person preparatory committee, had called for setting up a follow-up committee to coordinate all the opposition parties and to execute the contents of documents agreed at the talks.
"The Syrian National Council (Syria's main opposition group) has rejected that this committee act as a leader, which shows its interest to remain the sole leader of the opposition," Manna said.
A senior leader of the SNC told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the council had rejected granting any leadership powers to such a committee and wanted it to act solely as a coordinator.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by moqawama.org
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