[Vredeslijst] woensdag demo tegen militaire interventie Syrië

Henk van der Keur henk.vdkeur op antenna.nl
Do Sep 5 11:50:46 CEST 2013


Daar ben ik het helemaal mee eens. En er bestaan geweldloze oppositiegroepen. Neem 
bijvoorbeeld het National Coordination Committee (NCC), dat geen deel uitmaakt van de Syrian 
National Council (SNC), de coalitie van oppositiegroepen die door verscheidene Westerse 
regeringen beschouwd wordt als de legitieme vertegenwoordiging van de Syrische bevolking

Henk van der Keur

Zie bericht in The Huffington Post:
Syria Conflict: Opposition Leader Haytham Al-Manna Criticises Plans For US Military 
Intervention As 'Satanic'
Posted: 02/09/2013 12:50 BST  
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/09/02/syria-conflict-
manna_n_3854981.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar

Speaking to the Huffington Post UK, Haytham al-Manna, the Paris-based spokesman of the 
National Coordination Committee (NCC), said: "Our position is against any [western] 
aggression against Syria. There is no [option of] military aggression against the regime, it will 
be against.. the population."

The NCC, which consists of a dozen or so secular, leftist political parties inside Syria, is not a 
member of the Syrian National Council (SNC), the coalition of opposition groups recognised as 
the legitimate representative of the Syrian people by several western governments. The latter 
has long supported western military intervention against Assad; the former does not.

The NCC's Manna, a veteran human-rights activist whose brother was killed by the Assad 
regime, said US ordnance won't "make the distinction between military and civilian targets. I 
saw what happened in Iraq..and all the [previous] American interventions."

Manna's brother was killed by the Assad regime but he doesn't support military intervention
Manna added: "We are against the intervention in Syria of Hizbollah [and] of foreign fighters 
from al Qaeda. We cannot build democracy in Syria with others."

Criticising the United States, Turkey, Israel and other regional powers, he said: "We are not in 
favour of a satanic intervention against a satanic regime."


Several other opposition groups have criticised the NCC for being too soft on the Syrian 
government, with the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) dismissing it as "just the other face of the 
same coin". But Manna insisted that the "political opposition outside Syria" is a "minority 
inside the country". The NCC spokesman claimed that "the majority of Syrian society is 
against any [foreign military] intervention".

Referring to the proposed 'Geneva II' UN-backed peace conference in Switzerland, Manna 
warned that "we have now the opportunity.. to push all parties, the regime and the opposition, 
to go to Geneva.. Up to now, [the Assad regime] accepted it had to go to Geneva.. I am not 
sure [Assad] will go at the end of the year."

bashar al assad

Manna wants pressure to be put on Assad and the rebels to attend peace talks in Geneva
However, most of Syria's opposition groups, as well as a growing number of Western 
diplomats, believe Assad will not agree to negotiate with his opponents unless there is a 
credible threat of US-led military action. Manna disagrees. "If [Assad] doesn't accept [he has] 
to go, Russia will change its position [of support] because it is an essential part of Geneva II."

Responding to his critics who take a more hardline stance against the regime, and insist on 
Assad's resignation as a precondition to peace talks, Manna said that the rebels had been 
refusing to negotiate with the Syrian president for over two years "and we lost more than 
70,000 people in Syria because of this position". The prolonging of the Syrian civil war, he 
explained, "is only in the interests of Assad and al Qaeda".

For Manna, there is no alternative to negotiations. "The regime and the opposition must go to 
Geneva II without preconditions," he told HuffPost UK. "The only precondition is applying [the 
principles of the] Geneva communique. And this is in the interests of the democratic 
opposition, not of al Qaeda [or] the Islamists." The Geneva communique, published in June 
2012, called on all parties to the conflict to recommit to a "sustained cessation of armed 
violence" and immediately implement the then UN envoy Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan.

In recent days, US and UK officials have spoken about the importance of "enforcing the 
international norm with respect to chemical weapons" and taking military action to punish the 
Assad regime for its alleged use of sarin gas against civilians in Ghouta, east of Damascus on 
21 August.

Manna, however, pointed out that enforcing international law "is not a decision for Congress or 
for the French parliament.. We don't accept any unilateral decision from any country in the 
world, whether it is the US or Iran or the UK."


On 4 Sep 2013 at 17:14, kees op amok.antenna.nl wrote:

> Ik vind wel dat deze Georges Sabra op een punt gelijk heeft. Het staat
> mij ook tegen om samen met Assad-aanhangers te demonstreren. Ik vind
> eigenlijk dat een eventueel comité tegen westerse interventie in Syrië
> als een uitgangspunt zou moeten hebben dat verzet tegen het regime
> gerechtvaardigd is en wat mij betreft dat we ook solidair zijn met het
> geweldloze verzet. Het militaire verzet heb ik wel problemen mee,
> omdat het volgens mij steeds meer wordt overheerst door jihadisten en
> lokale sterke mannen. Het aanvankelijke volksverzet is deels
> getransformeerd tot een sektarische burgeroorlog. Kees.
> 
> VD AMOK
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