Syrian opposition agrees to attend peace talks

Under pressure from western and Arab allies, Syrian National Coalition votes to attend Geneva 2 conference starting on Wednesday.

Civilians stand on a damaged street in Aleppo after government forces allegedly shelled the northern city on Saturday. Zein Al Rifai / AFP

ISTANBUL // Syria’s deeply divided opposition finally agreed on Saturday to join an international peace conference this week, a day after Damascus offered concessions including a ceasefire plan for the battered city of Aleppo.

The Syrian National Coalition voted at a meeting in Istanbul in favour of attending next week’s 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 attending, although the US secretary of state John Kerry has accused the regime of diversionary tactics, saying “nobody is going to be fooled”.

The opposition 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 coalition leader, Ahmad Jarba, was due to to make an address later on Saturday.

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 of Bashar Al Assad, who they have been trying to unseat for almost three years.

The Syrian opposition had earlier sought assurances that Mr Al Assad would not be part of any transitional administration as a condition for attending peace talks, a demand his government has rejected.

Despite its ceasefire offer, the Syrian government launched airstrikes on Aleppo and the surrounding countryside on Saturday, killing 16 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“Warplanes bombed areas in the neighbourhoods of Tariq Al Bab and Karam Al Jabal in Aleppo,” killing five people, including children, the Britain-based monitoring group said.

The two areas are controlled by opposition fighters who have been battling government forces since they launched a major offensive in the city in the summer of 2012.

Warplanes also hit the Sakhur neighbourhood on Saturday morning, killing another five people, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground for its reports.

The Observatory also said helicopters dropped explosive-packed barrels on Al Bab town, east of Aleppo, that led to the death of five fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al-Qaeda-linked rebel group, and another man.

Helicopters also dropped barrel bombs on other areas of the northern city, once Syria’s commercial capital, and two villages in the south of Aleppo province, it said.

More than 500 people were killed by barrel bombs in nearly two weeks of airstrikes on Aleppo in December.

Meanwhile, food supplies entered the besieged Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus on Saturday for the first time in four months, in an apparent goodwill gesture by the government ahead of the peace conference in Switzerland.

Dozens of people in the camp are reported to have died of hunger and lack of medical care, and the UN warned on Friday 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,” a Palestine Liberation Organisation official, Anwar Abdul Hadi, said.

Mr Abdul Hadi said Syrian authorities helped facilitate the delivery, which was a trial run and “further batches will be delivered successively from tomorrow”.

He said the delivery was made possible after an agreement was reached on Friday between representatives of Palestinian factions and rebels in the camp.

“The delegation will continue holding discussions on the return of the camp’s residents and the evacuation of gunmen from it,” he said.

“A number of sick and injured persons will be evacuated from the camp tomorrow morning with help from the Syrian Red Crescent within the framework of the settlement,” he added.

Yarmouk has been largely under the control of opposition forces for months and government troops have imposed a suffocating siege that was tightened in September.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday that 54 people have died in the camp since then from hunger or lack of medical care.

Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that the agency had donated 200 food parcels to be delivered to the camp after being approached by Syrian authorities.

The UNRWA tried to send a six-truck convoy carrying food, medical supplies and polio vaccinations into Yarmouk on Monday, but the mission was aborted after gunmen fired bullets near the convoy and a mortar shell exploded nearby.

On Friday, the UN rights chief Navi Pillay warned that blocking aid to Yarmouk could be a war crime.

* Agence France-Presse