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Syria Opposition Seeks Rebel Backing for Geneva Talks

by VOA News November 10, 2013

Syria's main Western-backed opposition coalition has announced it will not attend proposed peace talks in Geneva unless it receives the backing of rebels on the ground.

Syrian National Coalition spokesman Khaled Saleh, speaking to reporters on the second day of an SNC meeting in Istanbul Sunday, said an opposition delegation will hold meetings in Syria with different brigades from the rebel Free Syrian Army in the coming days.

Saleh said if the SNC 'is going to be in Geneva, [the rebels] are going to be part of that delegation.'

Coalition members want the backing of rebel fighting units, community leaders and activists inside Syria to counter criticism that they are out of touch with those battling on the ground.

Major Islamist rebel brigades have declared their opposition to the Geneva process if the conference does not result in President Bashar al-Assad's removal and some have said they would charge anyone who attended the planned international talks with treason.

Sunday's developments come as government officials and rebels reached a deal to ease a blockade on a rebel-held town near the Syrian capital, allowing food to reach civilians there for the first time in weeks.

An activist group, the Qudsaya Media Team, confirmed the truce in a statement but gave few details.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deal allowed food and flour to enter the town on the outskirts of Damascus, under blockade since October.

Syria's government is under pressure from the international community to allow food and medical aid into blockaded areas, particularly after reports emerged of widespread hunger in the blockaded Damascus suburb of Moadamiyeh this year.

Meanwhile, fighting raged for control of a key base protecting the government-held airport in the northern city of Aleppo.

The Brigade 80 base has been reported to have changed hands multiple times in the past day. It first fell to rebels in February, but the government retook it last week.

The Observatory and a Lebanese television channel that closely follows Syria cited activists as saying it was recaptured by rebels overnight Friday but by Sunday afternoon, troops loyal to Assad were again in control.