The new Syrian opposition prime minister Ghassan al-Hitto "is more Texan than Muslim Brotherhood," Washington's envoy to Syria Robert Ford told U.S. lawmakers Wednesday.
| More Texan? Obama must really hate the guy... |
Dismissing concerns at a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ford insisted that Hitto, narrowly elected this week by the Syrian National Coalition as interim premier, was "not a religious extremist -- far from it."
"I've met him twice... and he struck me as more Texan than Muslim Brotherhood, frankly," Ford said of Hitto, a former IT executive who has lived in the southwestern U.S. state of Texas for decades.
"I don't know what his political affiliations are. But I do know that he also has a tolerant vision of Syrian society," Ford stressed. "He has, at some self-sacrifice, gone over to help with the humanitarian crisis in Syria. He did not have to do that."
Hitto is expected to name a technocratic government that plans to operate inside Syria, attempting to bring rule of law and basic services to large swathes of rebel-held territory.
His election has exposed rifts in the fractured Syrian opposition, with at least 12 key members saying Wednesday they had suspended their membership.
"The Coalition is a non-elected body, and as such it does not have a right to choose a prime minister on a majority vote. There should have been consensus," dissenting member Kamal Labwani told AFP in Istanbul. |