The Syrian National Coalition opposition group is ready to negotiate a departure for President Bashar al-Assad with any member of his government who has not participated in the crackdown on the uprising, a high-level coalition member said on Friday.
Coalition president Moaz Alkhatib formulated the initiative in broad terms last month without consulting the coalition, catching the 70-member assembly by surprise. A powerful bloc in the coalition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organised group in the political opposition, criticised the initiative as harming the revolution.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem is due for talks in Moscow, one of Syria's main foreign allies, later this month.
In the first direct government response, Syria's minister for "national reconciliation", Ali Haidar, said this week he was willing to travel abroad to meet Alkhatib, the Cairo-based president of the opposition coalition.
But he said the authorities rejected any dialogue that aims "to hand power from one side to another" and insisted that formal negotiation must take place on Syrian soil.
On the Ground:
An estimated 40,000 people have fled a town in eastern Syria after three days of heavy fighting, the United Nations food agency said on Friday.
The World Food Programme said it had delivered additional rations to the area in recent days, adding: "A WFP team visited the area and estimated that around 40,000 people have fled al-Shaddadeh to al-Hassakeh city."
Rebels seized al-Shaddadeh in Syria's oil-producing east on Thursday after the fighting which killed 30 of their fighters and 100 Syrian troops, a violence monitoring group said.
This as, the Turkish army struck back after a shell fired from Syria crashed on the Turkish terriotories.
The rocket fell near the town of Yayladag near the Syrian borders.
On
Monday, a Syrian minibus exploded at a crossing on Turkey's border with
Syria near the Turkish town of Reyhanli, killing at least 13 people
including Turkish citizens and wounding dozens more.
REUTERS
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