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Dissident Syrian ex-premier Riad Hijab yesterday issued a new call for the arming of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Hijab, whose shock flight to Jordan with his family last August was the highest-profile defection from the Assad regime, said foreign arms shipments were the sole way to tilt the balance in the two-year-old conflict.
“Arming the Free Syrian Army is the only way of changing the situation on the ground and getting out of the hole the tyrant has dragged us into,” he said.
Hijab was speaking at a meeting of the Free National Gathering, an opposition grouping that he leads and which was founded in Amman in December with the stated intention of defending the interests of state employees sympathetic to the opposition and safeguarding state institutions when Assad falls.
Dissidents attending the meeting paid tribute to Qatar for its support for the Syrian people and its uprising.
Speaking to Qatar News Agency (QNA) on the sidelines of the Doha conference, opposition figures said the Syrian people would never forget about Qatar’s supportive stances towards their struggle to topple the regime that killed, abused and displaced them.
Hatem al-Zaher, a group member and a defected MP, said the Syrian people were grateful to Qatar for its support since the beginning of the uprising.
According to the conference’s final statement, the group revealed its political vision which sees the fall of the regime its main objective to make the transition from a tyrant police state to a democratic one that values freedom and dignity for the people.
The group said it aimed to preserve the Syrian state’s structure and to lay the legal foundations for the restructuring of state institutions and the sustaining of Syria’s unity. According to the statement, the only possible political solution is the one that includes a full power transfer based on a binding international resolution that ends the use of violence, frees detainees and allows return of the displaced.
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