The weekend meeting drew more than 200 opposition figures, including leading writer Michel Kilo and Hassan Abdul-Azim, who heads the outlawed Arab Socialist Democratic Union party. It was also notable because it took place inside Syria, rather than in a neighboring country, as most others have.
A statement released after the meeting called on Assad’s regime to immediately end its “acts of repression,” and it urged protesters to keep their movement peaceful and not be tempted to take up arms. The opposition members also stuck to an earlier position to oppose international intervention in Syria, though some protesters on the streets have called for unspecified outside help.
Assad warned Sunday that foreign intervention would divide the region and increase extremism, according to Syria’s official news agency, SANA. He also complained that steps by his government like abolishing Syria’s decades-old state of emergency and shutting down the special court that tried political prisoners were only met by “foreign pressures,” a reference to US and European sanctions.
The opposition consists of a variety of groups with often differing ideologies, including conservatives and secularists, and there have been many meetings of dissidents who say they represent the opposition. But most of those gatherings have been held in safer locations outside the country.
The weekend meeting was organized by a long established group called the National Democratic Change.
Among its demands, it called on the government to order soldiers back to their barracks, allow peaceful demonstrations, bring to justice those responsible for the killing of protesters, and release all political detainees.
Opposition figure Samir Aita, who spends much of his time in France, said the movement was open to dialogue with the regime, but only after a halt to the crackdown and the withdrawal of the army.
Meanwhile, a Syrian political asylum seeker says Jordanian security forces have moved 60 Syrian army and police defectors from a compound near the border with Syria to a safer place.
Many Syrians fleeing the crackdown have sought refuge in neighboring Turkey and Jordan.
Ibrahim Al-Jahamani says the men were suddenly taken and moved on Thursday night.
He refused on Sunday to reveal their new location. He says 40 other Syrians — civilians, like himself — remain in the compound near the border.
A Jordanian official confirmed the move. He refused to say if there was a threat against the lives of the Syrian defectors, who ranged in rank from corporal to colonel.
