More than 100 members of Syria's opposition parties and rebel fighting groups agreed at the end of two days of talks in Riyadh to work together to prepare for peace talks with
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
's government.
But the final hours of the meeting, which excluded Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
and Nusra Front fighters as well as the main Kurdish force controlling large parts of northern Syria, were overshadowed by protest from the powerful Death Eater group Ahrar al-Sham
...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014...
.
In a statement, it said it had withdrawn from the Riyadh meeting, objecting to what it said was a prominent role given to the mainly Damascus-based political opposition group, the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change, which it said was closer to Assad than to the opposition.
It also said rebel fighters had been under-represented at the talks and their voices largely ignored. However a copy of the final statement, seen by Rooters, had been signed by the Ahrar al-Sham delegate.
Nevertheless, its withdrawal - however brief - highlighted enduring rifts among Assad's enemies which have bedevilled Western and Gulf Arab efforts to rally enough political and military pressure on the president to force him to step down.
Abdulaziz al-Sager, a Saudi academic who chaired the Riyadh talks, said the opposition would meet government officials in the first 10 days of January, the first such talks in two years
aimed at ending a bloody civil war which has drawn in forces from the United States, Russia, Europe and the Arab world.
"There will be a meeting decided by (United Nations
...an organization originally established to war on dictatorships which was promptly infiltrated by dictatorships and is now held in thrall to dictatorships...
envoy Staffan) de Mistura in January. A meeting between the opposition and the Syrian regime to go to a transitional period," he said, in comments translated at a news conference.
"This will take place in the first 10 days of January."
A statement at the end of the two-day conference said Assad should leave power at the start of a transitional period, and called for an all-inclusive, democratic civic state. It also committed to preserving state institutions.
The opposition was willing to enter talks with Syrian government representatives and to accept a U.N.-supervised ceasefire, the statement said.