Syrian opposition groups sign coalition deal

Moaz al-Khatib, a peacher, has been selected to head the newly formed Syrian National Coalition, a delegate has revealed.

Influential businessman Riad Seif, who proposed the US-backed initiative to set up an umbrella group of opposition
groups inside and outside Syria, was elected as deputy president along with Suhair al-Atassi, a well-known female activist.

Syrian opposition groups meeting in Qatar inked a hard-won unity deal on Sunday, agreeing to form a national coalition to fight against President Bashar al-Assad, delegates said.

"We signed a 12-point agreement to establish a coalition," said leading dissident Riad Seif, who drew up the US-backed reform proposals on which Sunday's agreement was based.

Participants in marathon talks in Qatar said discussions were continuing on details of a planned new government-in-waiting, but that the Syrian National Council had now heeded Arab and Western calls to join a new, wider coalition.

Reservations in SNC ranks about what many members saw as a move to sideline it had prompted repeated delays in the Doha talks and mounting frustration among other dissident groups and the opposition's Arab and Western supporters.

But after negotiations that ran into the early hours of Sunday and resumed in the afternoon, opposition officials said a deal had finally been reached.

Finalising the deal

Al Jazeera's correspondent Mohammed Vall, reporting from Doha, said that the different parties were now finalising the deal.

"We also know that this name: the Syrian National Coalition will also change because they do not want it to sound like Syrian National Council when reduced to its acronym of SNC.

"There is also a longer version of the name, which is: The National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary Forces and the Opposition".

Our correspondent said that the Kurdish National Council asked for 48 hours to consult with their leaders outside of Qatar, but all indications were that they "were going to sign this paper".

Formal ceremony

The deal came after the Syrian National Council, which had formerly been seen as the main representative of the opposition, heeded Arab and Western pressure to agree to a new structure embracing groups that had been unwilling
to join its ranks.

"The French are set to become the first foreign power to recognise this council," our correspondent said.

Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Doha, said the coalition said that as soon as they received "full recognition from the international community, they will announce a provisional government".

"Ideally they say they will ask the international community to provide them with a humanitarian corridor, a no-fly zone in the northern parts of the country, preferably in Idlib province or in Aleppo, but they say that they practically need a month or two before being able to move to that area, to set up their provisional government," our correspondent said.

Former prime minister Riad Hijab, who fled to neighbouring Jordan in August in the highest-ranking defection from President Assad's government, hailed the agreement as "an advanced step towards toppling the regime".

Details of the deal have yet to be released, but Maleh said it was "no different" to the original proposals put forward by Seif, one of the leaders of the so-called Damascus Spring protest movement of a decade ago and now touted in Washington as a potential new opposition chief.

Seif's proposals envisaged the formation of a transitional government, a military council to oversee rebel groups on the ground and a judiciary to operate in rebel-held areas.

The 10-member transitional government would be elected by a new 60-member umbrella group to be drawn from civilian activists and rebel fighters inside Syria, as well as by the exiles who have dominated the SNC.

Source: Al Jazeera And Agencies