BEIRUT (Reuters) – Two leading Syrian opposition parties have agreed a road map to democracy should mass protests nearly in their 10th month succeed in toppling President Bashar al-Assad, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters yesterday.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets across Syria on Friday, aiming to demonstrate the strength of their movement to Arab League monitors checking whether Assad is implementing a pledge to halt his armed crackdown on the unrest.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces had shot dead 27 people on Friday in areas where there were no observers, adding to the toll of a conflict that the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 people, most of them unarmed civilians.
With little confidence in the Arab observer mission, opposition groups are trying to create a coherent movement to boost their credibility in the eyes of other countries fearful of chaos if Assad is forced out. The leading opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Council (SNC), signed the deal on Friday with the largely Syrian-based National Co-ordination Committee, according to Moulhem Droubi, a top SNC member from Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood.
The two groups have received attention from Western powers, although it is not clear how much sway they hold with the mass of protesters.
The document seen by Reuters says the deal will be presented to other opposition groups at a conference next month.
The National Coordina-ion Committee had disagreed with the SNC’s calls for foreign intervention – one of several disputes that had prevented opposition groups agreeing on what a post-Assad Syria should look like.
Under their pact, the two sides “reject any military intervention that harms the sovereignty or stability of the country, though Arab intervention is not considered foreign”.
The parties outlined a one-year transitional period, which could be renewed once if necessary. In that period, Syria would adopt a new constitution “that ensures a parliamentary system for a democratic, pluralistic civil state”.
