HE the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah and Syrian National Coalition leader Moaz al-Khatib cutting the ribbon at the opening of the Syrian interim government’s first embassy in Doha yesterday.
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An opposition bloc recognised by the Arab League as the sole representative for Syria opened its first embassy in Qatar yesterday in a diplomatic blow to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
HE the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Khalid bin Mohamed
al-Attiyah and Syrian opposition chief Moaz al-Khatib jointly inaugurated the embassy of the Syrian National Coalition.
“This is the first embassy of the Syrian people,” said al-Khatib in the ceremony that saw the rebel flag raised on a villa.
Al-Khatib expressed gratitude for HH the Emir and the Qatari government and people for their support to the Syrian uprising and their understanding of the Syrian people’s painful experience.
“We are here to open the first embassy in the name of the Syrian people who have been stripped of their right for 50 years,” al-Khatib said following the ceremony, adding that the morale of the rebels remained at its peak and they were confident of victory “despite an international will not to let this revolution triumph”.
Al-Khatib, who took Syria’s seat at an Arab summit in Doha on Tuesday, voiced his frustration with world powers for failing to do more to help in the two-year-old struggle to topple Assad.
The Syrian National Coalition was formed in Qatar in November last year as the opposition umbrella group.
“The only way to victory is unity,” declared al-Khatib, who resigned earlier this week as leader of the coalition, but who is staying on as a caretaker.
Nizar Haraki, named by the coalition in February as its ambassador to Qatar, told AFP he would “soon” present his accreditation letter to HH the Emir.
The coalition has named envoys in several countries, including Britain, France, Libya, Turkey and the US, but has yet to open
diplomatic missions in those countries
Al-Khatib told Reuters in an interview he was surprised by a rebuff from the US and Nato to his request for Patriot missiles based in Turkey to help protect rebel-held parts of northern Syria from Assad’s helicopters and warplanes.
“I’m scared that this will be a message to the Syrian regime telling it ‘Do what you want’,” he said.
Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking to students in Moscow via video link from Brussels, again said the Western alliance had no intention of intervening in Syria.
Al-Khatib has cited the West’s failure to do more to help the opposition as a reason for announcing on Sunday that he would quit as leader.
He offered no clarity on his own political future in his interview with Reuters. “I have given my resignation and I have not withdrawn it. But I have to continue my duties until the general committee meets”, he said. Page 19
