Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, battling a popular uprising, named a former agriculture minister and staunch loyalist as prime minister on Wednesday to form a new government after last month's parliamentary election.
State television said Riyad Hijab replaces Adel Safar, who was appointed in April last year shortly after the revolt began in the south and later spread across the country, presenting Assad with the sternest challenge to his 12-year rule.
In a speech to parliament on Sunday, Assad said the new government would "take into account the new political forces" after the May 7 election, held under a revised constitution which allowed for new political parties to be established.
Most Syrian opposition figures boycotted the parliamentary election and a prominent dissident said that by appointing Hijab, a committed member of the ruling Baath Party, the president was snubbing demands for change.
"We expected Assad to play a game and appoint a nominal independent but he chose a hardcore Baathist," opposition campaigner Najati Tayyara said. "In any case the cabinet is just for show in Syria and even more so now, with the security apparatus totally taking over".
France slammed Hijab's appointment as a sham.
Speaking in an online briefing Wednesday, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the elections were a "pretense" and that the appointment of a new premier "constitutes a new evasion, a masquerade."
Assad "remains stubbornly deaf to the demands of his people," Valero said.
Later on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a broader international meeting on the crisis in Syria to include Iran and Turkey, with the aim of supporting a faltering peace plan brokered by envoy Kofi Annan. Lavrov made the comments while in Beijing.
The Russian FM warned that a regime change in Damascus may have disastrous consequences.
In
a joint statement, China and Russia voiced their sheer opposition to any military
intervention in Syria or change of regime.
Meanwhile, AFP quoted Turkish sources as saying
that a ministerial meeting on Syria will be held on Wednesday in Istanbul, with
the participation of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Clinton threw cold water on a Russian proposal for a meeting on Syria that would include Iran, saying it was "a little hard to imagine inviting a country that is stage-managing the Assad regime's assault on its people."
Clinton, speaking in Azerbaijan on Wednesday before departing for a conference on Syria in Istanbul, said participants would discuss "the essential elements of a democratic transition strategy (for Syria)."
On the field, fierce clashes
erupted overnight Tuesday, Wednesday between the regime’s security forces and
armed opposition groups in Rural Damascus and some of the capital’s
neighborhoods, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that also
reported shelling on rural Aleppo in northern Syria.
The toll of these clashes has reached 10 deaths so far.
The Observatory added that fierce clashes erupted in the city of Harasta in rural Damascus
between the security forces and combatants.
According to a
statement issued by the Observatory, the opposition combatants also clashed
with soldiers at checkpoints in Douma, Arbin and Zamlaka. The Damascus neighborhoods
of Al-Kaboun and Techrin also witnessed heavy gunfire exchange between gunmen
and security forces at checkpoints.
REUTERS/LBCI