Syrian National Council president George Sabra talks with other opposition members during a break at the meeting in Istanbul yesterday.
AFP/Damascus
Syrian rebels kept up resistance yesterday to a Hezbollah-backed assault on a strategic central town as pressure grew on the opposition to attend a peace conference after the regime agreed to do so.
The main opposition National Coalition has met in Istanbul for three days trying to overcome deep divisions over Russian and US proposals to convene a conference to which representatives of President Bashar al-Assad would be invited without any formal precondition for him to step down.
The opposition’s long-standing position is that, after more than two years of devastating conflict has killed more than 94,000 people, it will not negotiate until Assad agrees to leave.
Delegates said efforts to reach an agreed position on the proposed conference were being delayed by pressure from some of the opposition’s Gulf Arab backers for an overhaul of its membership that was being resisted by other governments.
The meeting was expected to continue into an unscheduled fourth day, they added.
The intervention of hundreds of fighters of Shia militant group Hezbollah from neighbouring Lebanon has given the regime the upper hand in the battle for Qusayr.
Loyalists overran a disused military airport yesterday just north of the besieged town, where the rebels had set up base, a military source said.
But six days after the regime assault began, fierce resistance continued from the rebels, for whom Qusayr provides an important supply line for arms and volunteers from nearby Lebanon.
“The fighting and shelling, which took place on Saturday on the main roads inside and outside of Qusayr, are the most intense since the beginning of the offensive,” said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdul Rahman.
He said at least 18 rebels and two civilians had been killed.
Qusayr is a key prize for Assad because of its strategic location between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast, the Alawite heartland of the embattled president’s regime.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah yesterday vowed “victory” in Syria and stressed it was in his militant anti-Israeli group’s own interest to defend the Assad regime.
“I say to all the honourable people, to the mujahedeen, to the heroes: I have always promised you a victory and now I pledge to you a new one” in Syria, he said in a speech for the 13th anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon.
“Syria is the rear guard of the resistance (Hezbollah’s fight with Israel), its backbone, and the resistance cannot stay with its arms folded when its rear guard is exposed,” he said. “We are idiots if we do not act.”
His speech followed rare criticism of Hezbollah on Friday by Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, who cautioned it against its intervention in Syria.
Of concern to world powers is that the offensive in Qusayr has sparked renewed clashes between Assad supporters and opponents inside Lebanon.
Fighting between them in the Lebanese port of Tripoli has killed 28 people since May 19, a security source said.
Iranian Defence Minister Ahmed Vahidi yesterday denied accusations by US officials that Iranian forces had forces on the ground alongside Hezbollah. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has never sent military forces to Syria and will never do so,” he said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said Assad should have no role in the proposed conference.
“We support the will of the Syrian people, which has expressed its will clearly, saying it does not wish to see any role in the conference for Bashar al-Assad, or any of those whose hands are stained with Syrian blood,” he said.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on a visit to his country’s volatile border with Syria, urged citizens to keep welcoming refugees after deadly bombings early this month fuelled local resentment
A fierce opponent of Assad’s regime, Erdogan also brought a message for the Syrians, telling them not to be afraid as “the day of deliverance is near”.