PARIS: French President Francois Hollande said yesterday that the situation in Syria was still too unsure to start supplying weapons to the opposition, an idea France backs in the longer term.

France and Britain are both pressing for the relaxation of an arms embargo on Syria so that arms can flow to outgunned fighters waging a two-year-old uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The embargo expires on June 1 and both countries say it should be allowed to lapse. But Hollande said that before arms were delivered to Syria, guarantees were needed they would not fall into the hands of radical fighters.

“We will not do it as long as we cannot be certain that there is complete control of the situation by the opposition,” Hollande said during an interview on France 2 television.

A Cairo-based coalition of opposition groups in exile named the Syrian National Council is recognized by many countries, including the entire Arab League, as the sole legitimate representative for fighters battling Assad’s government forces.

Meanwhile, a top diplomat yesterday condemned the move by Qatar to let Syria’s opposition open an “embassy” in Doha, calling the decision “hasty and irrational,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported.

“Qatar’s theatrical act in giving the Syrian embassy to a group which is unelected is both hasty and irrational,” the deputy foreign minister in charge of Arab and African affairs, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, was quoted as saying.

“The people of Syria will not allow others to decide their country’s fate,” he said of Tehran’s key regional ally. “It is in Qatar’s interests to stop acting hastily and intensifying bloodshed among the Syrian people.”