Islamic Front Army Of Islam Review of the of the most important newspapers headlines about Syria NBC News: -Main Western-backed opposition group agrees to join Syria peace talks The Syrian National Coalition, the main Western-backed group battling to topple the government of Syria’s Bashar Assad, on Saturday agreed to take part in peace talks in Switzerland next week. The group’s legal committee approved participation in the talks by a 58-14 vote. Secretary of State John Kerry praised the decision in a statement Saturday. "This is a courageous vote in the interests of all the Syrian people who have suffered so horribly under the brutality of the Assad regime and a civil war without end," he said. The New York Times: -Syria Proposes Aleppo Cease-Fire as Opposition Weighs Attending Peace Talks
Transcript
Islamic Front
Army Of Islam
Review of the of the most important
newspapers headlines about Syria
NBC News:
-Main Western-backed opposition group agrees to join
Syria peace talks
The Syrian National Coalition, the main Western-backed group battling to topple the government of Syria’s Bashar Assad, on Saturday agreed to take part in peace talks in Switzerland next week. The group’s legal committee approved participation in the talks by a 58-14 vote. Secretary of State John Kerry praised the decision in a statement Saturday. "This is a courageous vote in the interests of all the Syrian people who have suffered so horribly under the brutality of the Assad regime and a civil war without end," he said.
The New York Times:
-Syria Proposes Aleppo Cease-Fire as Opposition Weighs Attending Peace Talks
BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government on Friday proposed a cease-fire with rebel forces in the city of Aleppo and said it was willing to exchange detainee lists with the opposition to pave the way for a possible prisoner exchange.
The proposals, which Walid al-Moallem, the Syrian foreign minister, said he had given to Russia, appeared to be an effort by the government to show good faith days before an international peace conference is to be convened in Switzerland aimed at ending Syria’s civil war
- Ex-Official Claims to Speak for Sidelined Syrians
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — For years, Jihad Makdissi was the urbane, outward-looking face of the Syrian government, proclaiming its views in perfect English as the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman. Then, about a year ago, he resigned and fled here, withdrawing his support from President Bashar al-Assad without throwing it to the opposition, quietly waiting, he said, for his chance to be of use.
Now, with long-awaited but shaky peace talks set to begin in Switzerland on Wednesday, Mr. Makdissi has resurfaced, a rare high-profile dissenter who is seeking to position himself as a voice for the many Syrians who remain on the sidelines, skeptical of the armed uprising but still wanting deep change in their country.
Much is resting on the so-called Geneva II peace conference on Syria to end the conflict in the country.
The UN-backed talks, scheduled to take place on January 22 in Switzerland, are set to bring together representatives from both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and the Western-backed political opposition for the first time since the conflict began almost three years ago.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said the landmark conference would be "a mission of hope", adding that it was "unforgivable not to seize this opportunity" to end a war that has left more than 130,000 people dead and millions more displaced.
- Syria main opposition to attend Geneva talks
Syrian National Coalition votes in favour of participating in January 22 peace talks in Switzerland.
The Syrian National Coalition, the main umbrella opposition body in exile, has agreed to participate in long-awaited peace talks planned for January 22 in Geneva.
The Syrian National Coalition's media office said on Saturday that of 75 voters, 58 voted in favour of attending the conference against 14 'No' votes, two abstentions and one blank vote.
"We are joing Geneva talks to rid Syria of this criminal [President Bashar al-Assad]," Ahmad Jarba, president of Syrian National Coalition said at a press conference after the ballot held on the outskirt of Turkish city of Istanbul.
- Aid enters besieged Palestinian camp in Syria
Food aid reaches Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus for first time in four months after reports of deaths due to hunger.
Food aid has entered the besieged Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in the Syrian capital, Damascus, for the first time in four months, a Palestinian official and Syrian state media have said.
The delivery of food comes after reports that dozens of people in southern Damascus camp have died of hunger and lack of medical care, and a UN warning that blocking aid may amount to a war crime.
"A first batch of food aid entered successfully this morning and distribution to residents has begun," Palestine Liberation Organisation official Anwar Abdul Hadi told AFP news agency.
Fox News
-'We don't have long,' say Syrian rebels locked in battle
with Al Qaeda, Assad
Syrian rebels “don’t have long” as they face not only the army of
President Bashar al-Assad, but fierce attacks from the Al Qaeda
fighters who once battled alongside them, an opposition leader told
FoxNews.com.
In recent days, the rebels have killed five top Al Qaeda leaders in
eastern Syria, said Oubai Shahbandar, Turkey-based spokesman
for the Syrian Opposition Coalition. He said taking on Al Qaeda,
which is believed to be seeking to topple Assad not to bring about
democracy, but to establish a base for terror operations, is
stretching the Free Syrian Army to the breaking point.
- Syria says ready for cease-fire, prisoners swap
BEIRUT – Syria's foreign minister said Friday his country is
prepared to implement a cease-fire in the war-torn city of Aleppo
and exchange detainees with the country's opposition forces as a
confidence building measure ahead of a peace conference
opening next week in Switzerland.
Walid al-Moallem told journalists about the cease-fire plan after
meeting in Moscow with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.
He did not divulge details of the plan, which would contain
"measures to enforce security" in Aleppo, 190 miles from the
Syrian capital, Damascus.
The announcement came as heavy battles raged between Syrian
government forces and rebels near the border with Lebanon on
Friday.
- UN refugee chief calls on nations to keep borders
open to Syrian refugees
SANLIURFA, TURKEY – The U.N. refugee agency's chief has
renewed a call on all nations to keep their borders open to Syrians
fleeing their country, saying Syria's neighbors should not be "left
alone" to cope with the influx.
More than 2 million people have been uprooted from their homes
in Syria's civil war, many scattered in refugee camps and informal
settlements dotting neighboring Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq.
UNHCR High Commissioner Antonio Guterres said during a
meeting with officials from countries neighboring Syria Friday that
the international community needed to assume "a true attitude of
burden-sharing."
Washington Post
- Syria peace conference faces long odds
SECRETARY OF State John F. Kerry did not seem to be persuading even
himself Thursday when he delivered a statement beseeching the
Western-backed Syrian Opposition Coalition to participate in a peace
conference in Switzerland beginning Wednesday. Rejecting any
“revisionism” about the purpose of the meeting, Mr. Kerry insisted that
what is called Geneva 2 “is about establishing a process essential to the
formation of a transition government body” to replace the regime of
Bashar al-Assad — who, according to Mr. Kerry, would be excluded from
the transition.
Mr. Kerry may have believed his declaration was necessary to prevent
his much-promoted initiative on Syria from collapsing before it could get
underway. Yet even if the opposition coalition votes to attend the
meeting in Montreux — its deliberations were underway as this page
went to press — there appears to be no chance that the outcome the
secretary of state described as the gathering’s “sole purpose” will come
about in the foreseeable future.
- Ousting Assad may be only the beginning
As al-Qaeda grows more powerful in Syria — seeking ―complete control over the liberated
areas,‖ according to a new Syrian rebel intelligence report — moderate opposition leaders are
voicing new interest in a political settlement of the grinding civil war. But a peace agreement
may just be a prelude to a new war against the terrorists.
This search for a political transition has also drawn together a disparate group of nations,
including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and the United States. These nations met quietly in
Geneva on Nov. 21 to discuss ways to provide humanitarian relief for thousands of civilians
who face the threat of starvation this winter.
- Syrian opposition votes to attend Geneva peace
conference
ISTANBUL — Syria’s opposition coalition voted Saturday to attend peace
talks with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in
Geneva this week, setting the stage for what world leaders hope will be
the first direct talks between the Syrian government and its opponents
since conflict erupted nearly three years ago.
The decision was apparently eased by a surprise message of support
from commanders of some of the biggest rebel groups fighting on the
ground, who had been summoned by their international sponsors to a
parallel meeting in Ankara, the Turkish capital.
The Independent
- Peace possible in Syria as political landscape changes
Gloomy predictions precede this week’s Geneva II peace talks
aimed at ending the three-year-old war in Syria. US Secretary of
State John Kerry says the meeting is about a mutually agreed
political transition in Damascus, while the Syrian government
insists it should focus on how to deal with ―terrorism‖. Nobody
expects President Bashar al-Assad to share power, still less step
down, when he controls most populated areas of the country.
Meanwhile, his opponents, fighting their own bloody ―civil war
within the civil war‖ inside Syria, are killing more of each other –
more than 1,000 in the first fortnight of the year – than they are of
the Syrian Army. Amid scenes of almost farcical rancour and
division, the Syrian National Coalition decided at a meeting
yesterday in Istanbul to attend the meeting in Switzerland.
- Exclusive: A call of duty - 25 leading charities urge PM
to open Britain’s door to its share of Syria's most
vulnerable refugees
Britain must accept its ―shared responsibility‖ for Syria’s refugees and join a UN scheme to welcome those fleeing the conflict, a coalition of 25 aid agencies and charities tells David Cameron.
In an open letter published in The Independent, the organisations call on the Prime Minister to ―transform the lives‖ of Syrians displaced by the civil war in their country by committing the UK to participate in the UNHCR’s global resettlement programme.
More than two million refugees have been registered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Syria’s four neighbouring countries, in what has been labelled the ―defining humanitarian crisis of our time‖.
Western governments have been asked to accept 30,000 of the most vulnerable refugees from the region under the rehousing scheme. But Britain has so far refused to take part, instead emphasising the importance of the substantial financial aid it is offering.
- While the West stands by and does little, Syria’s
troubled neighbours are forced to cope with an influx
of refugees
Playing the numbers game is rarely useful when discussing immigration,
but in the case of the refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war, the sheer scale of
the exodus bears repeating.
Estimates vary, for obvious reasons, but many more than two million
people have left the country since the conflict began. And, although we
in the West often assume it is our countries that routinely take in the
largest numbers of refugees, a glance at the facts reveals a far different
reality. For it is Syria’s closest neighbours that have to bear the greatest
