Syria: Saudi and Islamist rebel threat not stopping Geneva II
Damascus (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Preparations continue for the Peace Conference on Syria scheduled to start on 22 January 2014 in Geneva, this despite the partial meltdown of Syria's secular opposition and the hostility of Saudi Arabia, which remains opposed to Western overtures to the regime.
Recently, the United States, the European Union and Russia have tried to get the various factions in the fight against the regime to take part in the meeting.
However today, the Islamic Front, an umbrella group that includes the six main Islamist groups active in Syria, refused to meet with Robert Ford, the US ambassador in Damascus.
In recent days, the US diplomat had made contact with their leaders to persuade them to participate in the peace conference.
So far, only the Syrian National Council (SNC), the exiled secularist group, has agreed to participate in Geneva II. But the Council and its armed wing, the FSA, now represent only 10 per cent of the forces opposed to the regime.
For months, extremist Islamist groups, the real force fighting against Bashar al-Assad, have also attacked FSA forces and have reportedly seized its caches along the Syrian-Turkish border,
For its part, Turkey yesterday denied reports that it had sent weapons to Syria, or that it had financed Islamist rebels.
According to the London-based International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR), whose mission is to analyse and promote the understanding of political violence and radicalisation in the Middle East and around the world, at least 11,000 Islamist fighters are in Syria on a jihad against the Syrian regime.
Such movements have been apparently supported and financed by Gulf monarchies and Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday Saudi Ambassador to Britain Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz criticised Western positions on Bashar al-Assad and Iran, calling them "a dangerous gamble."
In a commentary in the New York Times, the Saudi diplomat slammed the US and Britain for stopping non-lethal aid to the rebels and for the overture to Tehran that could put at "risk the stability of the region and, potentially, the security of the whole Arab world".
Under the circumstances, "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no choice but to become more assertive in international affairs: more determined than ever to stand up for the genuine stability our region so desperately needs," Abdulaziz wrote.
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