(Reuters) – To applause from Arab heads of state, a foe of Bashar al-Assad took Syria’s vacant seat at an Arab summit on Tuesday, deepening the Syrian president’s diplomatic isolation and diverting attention from opposition rifts.
Speaking at an annual gathering of Arab leaders in the Gulf state of Qatar, Moaz Alkhatib said he had asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for American forces to help defend rebel-controlled northern parts of Syria with Patriot surface-to-air missiles now based in Turkey. NATO swiftly rebuffed the idea.
The insurgents complain that they have few weapons to counter Assad’s helicopter gunships and warplanes.
“It was a historic meeting. You could feel the grandiose nature of the meeting,” said opposition spokesman Yaser Tabbara.
“It’s a first step towards acquiring full legal legitimacy.”
Alkhatib said the United States, which has given non-military aid to Syrian rebels, should play a bigger role in helping end the two-year-old conflict in Syria, blaming Assad’s government for what he called its refusal to solve the crisis.
“I have asked Mr. Kerry to extend the umbrella of the Patriot missiles to cover the Syrian north and he promised to study the subject,” he said, referring to NATO Patriot missile batteries sent toTurkey last year to protect Turkish airspace.
“We are still waiting for a decision from NATO to protect people’s lives, not to fight but to protect lives,” he added, addressing a body that barred Assad’s government in late 2011.
Responding to Alkhatib’s remarks, an official of the Western military alliance at its headquarters in Brussels said: “NATO has no intention to intervene militarily in Syria.”
Turkey said it would be up to the rest of NATO to decide if members wanted to expand the remit of the Patriot batteries.
Michael Stephens, a researcher based in Qatar for Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, said acceding to Alkhatib’s request would effectively put NATO at war with Damascus.
DEFENSIVE DEPLOYMENT
NATO’s current deployment of three Patriot missile batteries in southern Turkey is intended to be purely defensive, shielding Turkey from possible attack from Syria. The Patriots are designed to shoot down hostile missiles in mid-air.
Alkhatib, a Sunni Muslim cleric, took Syria’s seat at the summit for the first time despite announcing on Sunday that he would step down as leader of the Syrian National Coalition.
Behind him sat Ghassan Hitto, the prime minister of a provisional opposition government that plans to run rebel-held area, and fellow senior opposition official George Sabra.
Alkhatib made a blunt call on other Arab leaders to “fear God in dealing with your people” and free political prisoners – a departure from anodyne tradition at the League.
But he also criticized what he called Western failure to bring an end to the conflict, and said an influx of foreign Islamist fighters should not be used by the West as a pretext to deny the Syrian people meaningful help.
“I don’t know if the real issue has to do with whether he’s a foreigner or he has a beard,” he remarked, referring to trademark beards worn by Islamist fighters.
Alkhatib denounced the presence in Syria of Iranians and Russians he said were backing the government.
OPPOSITION, REPRESSION
In his opening speech as host, Qatar’s Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani urged the U.N. Security Council to stop the “oppression and repression of the people” in Syria, halt the bloodshed and “present those responsible for these crimes against their people to international justice”.
The United Nations says about 70,000 people have been killed in a conflict that began with peaceful anti-Assad protests and turned into an increasingly sectarian armed insurrection.
The war in Syria has divided world powers, paralyzing action at the Security Council. The Arab world is also split, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar the most fervent foes of Assad, and Iraq, Algeria and Lebanon the most resistant to calls for his removal.
The conflict echoes sectarian strains between Sunni Muslims, notably in the Gulf, and Shi’ites, mainly in Iraq, Lebanon and non-Arab Iran, whose faith is close to Assad’s Alawite minority.
Syrian rebels again fired mortar rounds into central Damascus on Tuesday. State television said several people had been wounded by “terrorist” mortar bombs that landed in the Syrian Arab News Agency SANA compound in the Baramkeh district.
State television said a suicide car bomber killed and wounded several people in northeastern Damascus, although opposition activists said the blast could have been a mortar.
Syrian state TV did not cover the Arab League meeting in Qatar, airing a program on makeup for women instead.
A group of pro-Assad hackers signing themselves the Syrian Electronic Army claimed an attack on an Arab League website that directed readers to a picture of Assad and derided the League’s Egyptian secretary-general for his “loyalty to the sheikhs”.
INTERNAL DISARRAY
Alkhatib’s decision to quit, which he blamed on the world’s failure to back the armed revolt against Assad also appeared to be motivated by internal disputes in the alliance. It undermined the alliance’s claim to provide a coherent alternative to Assad.
Liberals saw it as a protest against what they view as the rising influence of hardline Islamists in the Qatari-backed umbrella group set up in Doha in November to replace the ineffectual Syrian National Council.
Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, criticized for its grip on the Syrian National Council, appears to be wield as much sway on its successor coalition, which has won wide international backing, but has failed to shake an image as consisting mostly of foreign-backed exiles immersed in political in-fighting.
Jane Kinninmont, of Britain’s Chatham House think-tank, said Qatar and the other Gulf states had been frustrated that the United States in particular and also European powers had not done more to help the Syrian opposition.
“The Gulf countries contrast this to the Iraq war which many of them were quite dubious about, and they see a U.S. that’s far less interventionist today, even though there’s a much greater case for an immediate humanitarian need.”
(Additional reporting by Mirna Sleiman and William Maclean, Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Oliver Holmes and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Gulsen Solker in Ankara and Adrian Croft in Brussels; Writing by Alistair Lyon)
