BEIRUT: In a significant policy shift, the Obama administration said Thursday it would for the first time provide non-lethal aid directly to rebels who are battling to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad, announcing an additional $60 million in assistance to Syria’s political opposition.
The modest package of aid to the military wing of the opposition will consist of an as-yet-undetermined amount of food rations and medical supplies for members of the Free Syrian Army who will be carefully screened to ensure they do not have links to extremists.
The move was announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at an international conference on Syria in Rome, and several European nations are expected in the coming days to take similar steps in working with the military wing of the opposition in order to ramp up pressure on Assad to step down and pave the way for a democratic transition.
However, a number of Syrian opposition figures expressed disappointment with the limited assistance.
“We do this because we need to stand on the side of those in this fight who want to see Syria rise again and see democracy and human rights,” Kerry said. “The stakes are really high, and we can’t risk letting this country in the heart of the Middle East being destroyed by vicious autocrats or hijacked by the extremists.”
“No nation, no people should live in fear of their so-called leaders,” he said, adding that President Barack Obama’s “decision to take further steps now is the result of the brutality of superior armed force propped up by foreign fighters from Iran and Hezbollah.”
Kerry and senior officials from 11 countries most active in calling for Assad to leave said in a joint statement released by the Italian Foreign Ministry that they had agreed in Rome on “the need to change the balance of power on the ground.”
The statement said the countries represented “will coordinate their efforts closely so as to best empower the Syrian people and support the Supreme Military Command of the Free Syrian Army in its efforts to help them exercise self-defense.”
Britain and France have signaled that they want to begin supplying the rebels with defensive military equipment such as combat body armor, armored vehicles, night vision goggles and training.
The EU Thursday renewed wide-ranging sanctions against Assad but left the door open to providing technical assistance, including training, to the country’s political opposition.
An amendment to the EU’s sanctions, which will be renewed for three months from Friday, notably enables “the provision of technical assistance, brokering services and other services for the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces intended for the protection of civilians.”
Other amendments authorize the supply of “nonlethal” military equipment and noncombat armored vehicles to the opposition Coalition “intended for the protection of civilians.” A diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity said the provision for technical assistance would, for instance, allow instructors from EU states “to offer training in the use of lethal equipment while not providing lethal equipment.”
At a meeting in Moscow, French President Francois Hollande stressed that new partners were needed to broker talks on ending the crisis and Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to consider the proposal.
The two leaders stressed that they shared the same goal for Syria, despite their different approaches on how to get there.
“We have the same objective – to avoid disintegration of this country and to avoid allowing terrorists to profit from this chaos. We want political dialogue,” Hollande said. But he added: “There is the question of the manner of how to get there through political dialogue.”
Putin quipped that reconciling their countries’ positions would be hard without copious amounts of alcohol.
“It seemed to me a good bottle of wine, even vodka would be needed to sort this out,” Putin told a news conference.
In what analysts described as a sign of disappointment, Syria’s political opposition Thursday postponed talks to choose the leader of a provisional government, two opposition sources told Reuters in Beirut.
Opposition leaders hoped a Saturday meeting in Istanbul would elect a premier to operate in rebel-controlled areas of Syria, threatened by a slide into chaos as the conflict between Assad’s forces and insurgents nears its second anniversary.
While one source said the meeting might take place later in the week, a second source said it had been put off because the three most likely candidates for prime minister had reservations about taking the role without more concrete international support.
“The opposition has been increasingly signaling that it is tired of waiting and no one serious will agree to be head of a government without real political and logistical support,” said Syrian political commentator Hasan Bali, who resides in Germany.
In Rome, appearing beside Kerry, the leader of the Syrian opposition coalition, Moaz al-Khatib, delivered a forceful and emotional demand for Assad to stop the brutality of his forces that have in recent days launched Scud missile attacks on the city of Aleppo.
“Bashar Assad, for once in your life, behave as a human being,” Khatib said. “Bashar Assad, you have to make at least one wise decision in your life for the future of your country.”
Pointedly, Khatib made no reference to the new assistance that Kerry had announced. Instead, he urged outside nations to support the creation of protected humanitarian corridors inside Syria, which the foreign ministers said they had “positively considered” but made no decisions on the subject.
Walid al-Bunni, a spokesman for the Syrian National Coalition, said the Syrian people had every right to feel “bitter” at the world’s inaction even while “the Scuds rain down on Aleppo” and expressed dissatisfaction with the aid announced by Kerry.
“We would have wished to receive a means with which to protect the innocent civilians dying from the regime’s warplanes and Scud missiles, but unfortunately, that was not even on the table,” he said by telephone from Budapest.