{"id":14829,"date":"2012-12-13T15:56:05","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T22:56:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14829"},"modified":"2012-12-13T15:56:05","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T22:56:05","slug":"friends-of-syria-demand-assad-cede-power-to-islamist-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14829","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFriends of Syria\u201d demand Assad cede power to Islamist opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cFriends of Syria\u201d meeting demands Assad cede power to Islamist opposition<\/strong>
\nBy Alex Lantier – 13 December, 2012 – WSWS<\/p>\n

Representatives of 130 governments, led by Washington and its European and Arab allies, attended a \u201cFriends of Syria\u201d meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco yesterday. Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani said they had agreed to declare the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces the sole representative of the Syrian people.<\/p>\n

The meeting came the day after US President Barack Obama officially recognized the National Coalition. The Islamist-dominated coalition was organized by the US State Department to represent the armed opposition groups fighting a NATO-backed proxy war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.<\/p>\n

A draft declaration circulated at the Marrakesh meeting stated, \u201cParticipants acknowledge the National Coalition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and the umbrella organization under which the Syrian opposition are gathering \u2026 Bashar al-Assad has lost legitimacy and should stand aside to allow a sustainable political transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Countries that still support Assad, including Russia, China, and Iran, did not attend the meeting in Marrakech. Speaking of the meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, \u201cThe United States has decided to place all its bets on an armed victory of the National Coalition.\u201d<\/p>\n

The meeting highlighted the criminal and reactionary character of the NATO proxy war against Syria, in which the US\u2019 Arab allies arm Al Qaeda-linked forces in a terrorist campaign with devastating consequences for Syrian civilians.<\/p>\n

Syrian Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Farouq Tayfour set the tone, suggesting that National Coalition forces would extra-judicially murder Assad. He compared Assad\u2019s fate to that of Libyan head of state Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose government was overthrown last year in a NATO war. Gaddafi was ultimately tortured and lynched by US-backed guerrillas after his convoy was bombed by NATO warplanes as he fled his hometown of Sirte.<\/p>\n

Tayfour said: \u201cBashar is under siege. His end will be like Gaddafi\u2019s end. Didn\u2019t Bashar say, \u2018I was born in Syria and I will die in Syria\u2019? That is what Gaddafi said as well, and that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s Islamist proxies criticized the State Department\u2019s decision announced on Tuesday to designate the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate inside the Syrian opposition, as a terrorist group. The State Department Spokeswoman charged the Al Nusra Front with having carried out nearly 600 attacks over the last year in Syria, in which \u201cnumerous innocent Syrians have been killed.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cFriends of Syria\u201d meeting demands Assad cede power to Islamist opposition By Alex Lantier – 13 December, 2012 – WSWS Representatives of 130 governments, led by Washington and its European and Arab allies, attended a \u201cFriends of Syria\u201d meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco yesterday. Moroccan Foreign Minister Saad Eddine El Othmani said they had agreed to more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2000],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14829"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14829"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14830,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14829\/revisions\/14830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}