The opposition Syrian National Coalition snapped back
empty-handed from Kuwait’s Arab summit Wednesday, analysts and activists said.
The key opposition group has failed to get Syria Arab League
seat after continuous promises and pledges by Arab state senior officials.
The Arab League ‘breaks the convent’ with Syrian people, veteran
opposition figure, Haitham al-Maleh, says to Zaman Alwasl.
The head of legal committee in the coalition assured that Lebanon and Iraq were Iran’s proxies in the Arab summit and that was clear evidence of the blatant interference in Arab affairs. " Some Arab State are still backing and patronizing Bashar al-Assad", al-Maleh added.
The Coalition has made only marginal gains at a meeting of
the Arab League, despite two days of intense lobbying.
The 22-member summit, which concluded in Kuwait City on
Wednesday, decided to allow the SNC to participate in ministerial meetings on
an "exceptional basis".
But the league stopped short on Wednesday of granting the
group the official recognition it sought to be Syria's sole legitimate
representative.
Nor did the body accede to SNC requests for weapons to be
sent to rebels fighting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.
Nabil al-Araby, the league's general-secretary, said Syria's
seat had been kept empty during the summit because "the SNC is not a
government and council seats are for governments".
He said this was the reason he "was against giving the
SNC a seat" at last year's League meeting in Cairo.
Louay Safi, a spokesman for the SNC, appeared to confirm
reports that Egypt had aligned itself with Algeria, Lebanon and Iraq in
rejecting the handover of Syrian representation to the SNC. "Egypt had
reservations," he told Al Jazeera.
Safi told reporters: "We are surprised that Nabil
al-Araby is still trying to reach a decision in a way that is not positive but
we are not going to come to any conclusions."
On Tuesday, Ahmad al-Jarba, the head of the SNC, criticised
the Arab League’s decision to keep the seat empty, saying it was a message to
Assad that "he can kill, and that the seat will wait for him to resolve his
war".
Al Jazeera reported earlier that Lebanon had threatened to
pull out of the summit if the SNC were granted the Syria seat.
The Lebanese finance minister tweeted during the opening
session that he stormed out of the session during Jarba's speech "in line
with his convictions and principles".
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari disagreed with the
access granted to the SNC, telling Reuters news agency: "Where is their
sovereignty? Where is their authority? They are not a state, they don't have a
government even."
Following the declaration, Safi said: "The decisions of
the summit are not against the opposition - they maintained recognition of the
Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian
people."
According to a declaration issued following the summit, the
bloc condemned the "mass killing" by the Syrian government, insisting
that a political solution to the three-year civil war remained a priority.
The summit did not explicitly address the diplomatic row
between Qatar and its Gulf neighbours.
Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain
withdrew their envoys from Doha "to protect their security and
stability".
The next Arab League Summit is due to be held next spring in
Egypt. With Al Jazeera
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