Syrian
National Coalition President Ahmad Jarba will tell Western and Arab
allies on Tuesday that the opposition will not attend proposed peace
talks in Geneva unless their goal is President Bashar al-Assad's removal
from power.
According to a text of a speech Jarba will make to a Friends
of Syria meeting in London, Jarba said the Syrian opposition risks
losing credibility if it yields to international pressure to go to
Geneva without achieving the uprising's goal of ousting Assad.
This
as British Foreign Secretary William Hague said it was vital that all
elements of Syria's opposition join peace talks tentatively scheduled
for Geneva next month if there was to be an end to the 31-month-old
conflict.
Hague was speaking before a meeting in London of the
so-called "London 11" nations seeking to bolster the Syrian opposition
and lay the groundwork for "Geneva 2".
The talks face great obstacles, including divisions within the
opposition, rivalry between rebel groups and President Bashar al-Assad's
reluctance to give up power. Many of the mostly Islamist rebel factions
fighting on the ground do not recognize the exile opposition backed by
the West.
Hague said the opposition, elements of which are loathe to negotiate with Assad's government, should attend the talks.
For his part US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters events may
have moved in Assad's favor since he and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov announced plans for the peace conference in May, but both he and
Hague sought to play this down.
Several officials, including Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby, have said
they expect the Geneva 2 conference to convene on Nov. 23, though the
United States, Russia and the United Nations have all said no date has
been officially set.
Britain, Egypt, France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United States will on Tuesday
discuss the agenda for the meeting and how to help the opposition
prepare for it, a U.S. official said.
While Washington has said it is open to the possibility of Iran, which
has supported Assad, coming to a Geneva conference, Kerry said it was
hard to see Tehran playing a constructive role unless it backs the idea
of a transitional government.
Hague said Iran must support a proposed interim government in Syria
including figures from Assad's administration and the opposition as the
way to political dialogue and free elections.
UN inspectors:
The US has given 10 armored vehicles to
the United Nations to help support efforts to verify and destroy Syria's
chemical weapons.
The United States spent $1.55 million from the State Department's
Nonproliferation and Disarmament Fund to pay for the armored vehicles,
which were shipped recently.
The State Department said Monday that the Royal Canadian Air Force
provided an aircraft to transport the vehicles from Joint Base Andrews
in Maryland to the Middle East.
So far, the U.S. has provided nearly $6 million in financial and in-kind
contributions to help rid Syria of chemical arms.
On the field:
Syria's state media say mortar shells have struck a pro-government suburb on the outskirts of Damascus, killing two people.
The state SANA news agency says the shells slammed into the
Jaramana neighborhood on Tuesday, an area where mostly minority Syrian
Christians and Druze live.
It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the shelling but Jaramana has
been a frequent target for the rebels. The suburb is near the town of
Mleiha, where fighting has been raging for days between President Bashar
Assad's troops and rebels trying to overthrow his rule.
Assad has drawn support from Syria's ethnic and religious minorities,
including Christians and members of his Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot,
in the country's civil war, now in its third year. The rebels are
dominated by Syria's Sunni Muslim majority.
REUTERS/AP
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