Syria's Opposition factions began talks in the Qatari capital Doha on Sunday aimed at forging a united front in their ongoing armed rebellion against the regime of embattled President Bashar al-Assad.
During the four-days of Arab League-sponsored negotiations in Doha, Syria's fractured Opposition factions intend to forge a more cohesive leadership that would help in securing wider international support for their common cause of ousting the Assad regime.
The Doha talks were initiated by the Western nations and their Arab allies. They expect the talks will help form a united Opposition coalition under a common umbrella and reshape the the Syrian National Council (SNC), the main Opposition group, into a possible government in exile.
In an effort to allay fears that the move to form a government in exile is aimed at negotiating with the Syrian government, groups taking part in the Doha talks said in a joint statement that "Assad and his entourage leaving power is a non-negotiable pre-condition for any dialogue aimed at finding a non-military solution, if that is still possible."
With the negotiations, the Turkey-based SNC expects to broaden its base and overhaul its current structure to include the fractured rebel groups under a new leadership that would have a fair representation of those fight in the front lines.
Notably, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had said last week that the United States and its allies were helping the rebels to form a new leadership, and admitted that Washington had "recommended names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure."
Stressing that the SNC can no longer be seen as the visible leader of the Opposition, Clinton said: "They can be part of a larger Opposition, but that Opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice that needs to be heard. So our efforts are very focused on that right now."
"There needs to be an Opposition that can speak to every segment and every geographic part of Syria. This cannot be an Opposition represented by people who have many good attributes but have, in many instances, not been inside Syria for 20, 30, or 40 years. And we also need an Opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution," she added.
Syria has been witnessing fierce fighting between government forces and armed rebels opposed to the Assad regime. More than 35,000 people, mostly civilians, are believed to have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced since the revolt began in March 2011.
The Syrian regime has been using heavy weaponry as well as helicopter-gunships and fighter jets in the conflict, particularly in capital Damascus and the country's second largest city Aleppo. Besides, Opposition groups also seem to have procured advanced weapons, which are being currently used against Syrian security forces.
The conflict is now viewed as a civil war by most of the international community. Violence has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to seek refuge in neighboring Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. It is now threatening to spill over to neighboring nations and is increasingly becoming sectarian in nature.
Continued efforts by the international community to find a solution to the crisis have been hampered by a deep divide in the U.N. Security Council, with Russia and China backing the Assad regime and the West opposing it.
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