Syria Opposition Calls on Assad to Hand over Power, Urges Query into Torture Charges
The Syrian opposition leader Wednesday called on President Bashar Assad to hand over power to a transitional government, as U.N.-led peace talks opened in Switzerland.
"I call on (the regime delegation) to immediately sign the Geneva I communique (setting out) the total transfer of powers from Assad, including for the army and security, to a transition government," Ahmad Jarba, president of the Syrian National Coalition, told the delegations gathered in the city of Montreux.
"We completely agree with the decisions of Geneva I which you have all agreed upon," he said, referring to a pact sealed in June 2012, which assented to the establishment of a mutually agreed transitional government.
The Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad has contested that the peace talks, which will continue later in the week in Geneva, would not set the scene for a handover of power.
But Jarba insisted the Geneva I deal was "the preamble to Bashar Assad's resignation and his trial alongside all the criminals of his regime".
He revealed the Syrian opposition was going to present a detailed timetable, complete with deadlines, to the next phase of the negotiations due to open in Geneva later in the week.
"If Assad remains in power in any way, that would mean that the Geneva II process is diverting from its path," Jarba argued.
"We seek reassurances that we have a Syrian partner in this room, and that this partner can transform itself from a delegation in Assad's name to a delegation in the name of Syria."
Later in the day, Jarba called for an international inquiry into allegations of mass torture and killings of people detained by the regime.
"We have to stop this spiral of violence. We do call for an international inspection to visit places of detention and see the facts of torture that our citizens face every day," he told the end of the first day of a peace conference in Switzerland.
"We must work together for a Syria, which will be a pluralist country excluding no-one, not excluding any ethnicity Alawites, Druze, Christians and others," Jarba told world leaders gathered in Montreux.
"We have suffered enough from the murders, the bombardments and this bloodshed has continued for far too long."
He was speaking after the publication of a report alleging the "industrial-scale" torture and murder of 11,000 detainees by the regime of Assad.
The report put together by a British law firm and commissioned by Qatar -- which backs the Syrian rebels -- says there is "clear evidence" of the starvation, strangulation and beating of detainees in Syrian prison.
It is based on forensic analysis of a portion of 55,000 digital images smuggled out of Syria by a defector who said he served as a police photographer, documenting as many as 50 bodies a day.
The photos in the report are gruesome, showing emaciated and seriously injured detainees.
Syria denies torturing detainees.
But British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday that the report "offers further evidence of the systematic violence and brutality being visited upon the people of Syria by the Assad regime".
Jarba urged the leaders: "We have to open the way to negotiations to put an end to the drama being faced by Syrian people and we have to ensure that very soon we'll have a state of law based on equality between all citizens in Syria, without any discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity."
The talks will now move to Geneva on Friday, when the Syrian regime and the opposition are due to begin closed-door talks with the United States, the United Nations and Russia acting as mediators.
Source: Agence France Presse
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