Opposition votes to join Syria peace conference

Syrian National Coalition president Ahmed Jarba and other members taking part in the meeting yesterday in Istanbul.AFP/DamascusSyria’s deeply divided opposition finally agreed yesterday to join an international peace conference, a day after Damascus offered concessions including a ceasefire plan for the battered city of Aleppo. The exiled umbrella group National Coalition voted at a meeting in Istanbul in favour of attending the talks in the face of intense pressure from the West and Arab states. The so-called Geneva 2 conference opening on Wednesday is aimed at setting up a transitional government to find a way out of the brutal conflict that has killed 130,000 people and made millions homeless since March 2011. Damascus had already said it would be attending, although US Secretary of State John Kerry has accused the regime of diversionary tactics, saying “nobody is going to be fooled”. The Coalition - a grouping of myriad organisations - had been locked in procedural disputes which delayed the decision by a day. But in a secret ballot, it agreed by 58 votes to 14 with two abstentions and one blank vote to take part, according to an official tally. The opposition has long struggled to put forward a united front during the civil war, rocked by infighting over its leadership and efforts to form a government in exile. And many members had been appalled at the idea of sitting down at the same table with representatives of the hated regime they have been trying to unseat for almost three years. In a surprise move in Moscow on Friday, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid Muallem presented his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov with a security plan aimed at halting “all military actions” in the devastated northern city of Aleppo. Muallem also said the regime was willing to swap prisoners with the rebels in the first such mass exchange since the conflict erupted, while Lavrov said Damascus was ready to take “a series of humanitarian steps” to improve the delivery of aid. And yesterday, food aid entered the besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus—where dozens of people are reported to have died of hunger and lack of medical care—for the first time in four months. Syria, Muallem said, would “make every effort to ensure Geneva 2 is a success and meets the aspirations of the Syrian people and the direct orders of President Bashar al-Assad”. But Kerry warned the regime it could not divert the peace talks away from the aim of installing a new government, after a letter from Muallem to the UN said Geneva was about getting rid of extremists in Syria.  “They can bluster, they can protest, they can put out distortions, the bottom line is we are going to Geneva to implement Geneva I, and if Assad doesn’t do that he will invite greater response,” he said.