Syrian revolutionary forces hold founding meeting in Turkey

Translation by Yusra Ahmed

(Zaman Al Wasl)- The constituent conference for the National Alliance for revolutionary forces was held this Saturday in the border town of Reyhanlı in Turkish Hatay province.

Tension has overshadowed the founding conference with some verbal altercations reached to physical aggressiveness. It was decided to extend the conference to next day to elect a General Secretary of the Alliance, besides the Head and his deputies, and the executive committee.

Many of known Syrian opposition’s figure participated in the conference, as well as many independent activists, officers, Military experts, civil community bodies, many of the opposition parties including “Hosn”, the overseas’ party, added to many leaders from inside Syria.

Loay Baqi, the conference organizer, told Zaman al-Wasl that the idea of the alliance came as an attempt to resolve the complicated situation of the Syrian revolution to create a bloc able to bypass reasons aborted allying among opposition’s forces.

He explained that external dictations were behind failure of previous alliances and coalitions among the revolutionary powers.

Baqi revealed that number of the Coalition’s member would be 235, and he confirmed that not all of them are politicians and military people, as they cannot represent all Syrian people.

“our doors are wide open to all who want to participate, we are keen to keep away from quotas and political blocs” he detailed.

Baqi added that they aim to form a “Shadow Government” and they would communicate with all forces on ground. He confirmed that all costs of the conference were generated from the coalition’s members’ donations.

He added that they later might be able to accept international donations, according to their situation on ground.

Dr. Mohamed Sadiq, the member of the preparatory committee of the conference told Zaman al-Wasl that they would try to form a “Shadow Government” to observe the Opposition’s Government. He confirmed the existence of communication between the coalition’s founders and other forces and organizations outside Syria to feed the coalition to form a very strong body able to achieve Syrians' goals inside and outside the country.

Zaman al-Wasl correspondent reported that Omar Ashoor, the founder of Justice and Development Party had withdrawn on the conference because of his rejection to nominating some names to the presidency of the Alliance.

According to our correspondent, Ashoor was subject to physical assault by one on the conference’s attendees, which forced the Turkish security forces to intervene.