Fri. 1 July. 2011

GUARDIAN A roadmap for Syria ………………………..………………..1

INDEPENDENT Robert Fisk: First the Syrians, then the Iranians, then the

Libyans were the expedient culprits…………………………1 Fisk: UN blames Hezbollah for Hariri bomb murder …….....3

ECONOMIST The squeeze on Assad ……………………………………….4

GUARDIAN The cult of Bashar al-Assad ……………………………..…12

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Clinton warns Syria's Assad that time is running out ……...16

RUDAW Political Parties Divide Syria’s Kurdish Youth …………....18

TODAY’S ZAMAN Davutoglu to go on Mideast tour, including Syria …………20

JERUSALEM POST Failing to move Russia, EU and US slam Syria at UN …….22

NYTIMES Coalition of Factions From the Streets Fuels a New

Opposition in Syria………………………………………...24WASHINGTON POST

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Syrian student protesters rounded up, beaten ………………28 HOME PAGE

Guardian: 'A roadmap for Syria (in English)Syrian sources have revealed that the US state department is promoting a roadmap for political reforms that would transform Bashar al-Assad's regime – but leave him in place'..

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Robert Fisk: First the Syrians, then the Iranians, then the Libyans were the expedient culprits Independent,Friday, 1 July 2011

At first, it was the horrible Syrians. Since the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri wanted the remainder of Syria's military rabble – around 20,000 men, although the news agencies claimed 44,000 – out of Lebanon, it must have been the Syrians who did it. Syria's "friends" in Lebanon – security agents who should have been able to keep Hariri alive if they had wanted to – were arrested.

Four of them were locked up in the country's notorious Roumieh prison for years before the UN grovelled and said that, well, there weren't really enough grounds to hold them and that they were, hrmpph, hrmpph, innocent. And their names do not appear on the UN indictments.

In other words, it must have been the Iranians or – better still – Hezbollah. As the years went by, the Syrians fell out of the blame-hole. Seymour Hersh, one of the only serious journalists left in the United States, was by chance interviewing the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad when he heard the news of Hariri's killing and recorded the sense of genuine shock when the great man heard of the Hariri murder. Well, you can fake these things. But...

Then, within a couple of years, Der Spiegel told us it was Hezbollah, Iran and Syria's favourite Lebanese militia, enemy of Israel and war-horse of any peace process in the Middle East, who

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killed the largest prime minister in Lebanese politics. No one in Lebanon really believed this. Almost everyone outside Lebanon did. That Hezbollah, with their canny intelligence services would mess themselves up with a Syrian kill-Hariri project was unbelievable.

Memories. When Pan Am crashed on Lockerbie, we were all told it was the Iranians, supported by the Syrians, but then the press were encouraged to blame the Libyans and so we had the saga of a certain Mr Megrahi who may – or may not – tell us more when the Libyan rebels and the SAS ring his door bell in a year or two's time.

What had changed, of course, was that we needed the Syrian army to defend Saudi Arabia from Iraq after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. So the Syrians became the good guys and the Libyans became the bad guys and everything went fine until Gaddafi kissed Blair and Blair kissed Gaddafi and Gaddafi decided to kill all his Senoussi enemies. Well, at least we can still blame Gaddafi for Lockerbie.

But did Hezbollah kill Hariri? I was only 400 metres from the bomb explosion on 14 February 2005, lucky to be alive, unlucky enough to see Hariri burning on the roadside. The Syrian Baath Party security apparatus murdered him, I think, without any reference to President Assad, just as I think they killed Pierre Gemayel Junior and the journalist-historian Samir Kassir. Well, no murder indictment in Lebanon has ever seen the light of day in court.

So it's a good time to bang up the latest culprits in Lebanon – if you're an American government agency – when the Israelis are frightened of another Israeli-Hezbollah war. A good time, too, to stir up another sectarian dish between the Sunnis of Hariri and the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon when Assad's Shia Alawis are fighting the majority Sunnis of Syria. As for those guys locked up for so many years on the say-so of the UN: released through lack of evidence. Hmmm, as I always say to friends here when they ask

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me of these matters. The problem in Lebanon is that everyone is innocent. And everyone is guilty.

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Robert Fisk: UN blames Hezbollah for Hariri bomb murder Independent,Friday, 1 July 2011

More than six years after ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri was blown up by a truck bomb on the Beirut Corniche along with 21 other Lebanese, a UN Special Tribunal has blamed four Hezbollah officials for the assassination and issued arrest warrants for the quartet.

The UN initially pointed the finger at Lebanese security officials – who were imprisoned and then released – then Syrian officials (whose identities they then tried to keep secret), and finally, yesterday, decided that Israel's principal enemy in Lebanon, the Hezbollah, was to blame.

Mustapha Badraddin, the head of the militia's military operations, topped the list – the Lebanese press had been telling us this for weeks – and thus produced immediate chaos within the new Lebanese government in which Hezbollah has a number of seats.

How can you rule a country when one of your principal cabinet blocs killed the father of the man who ran the previous government, ex-prime minister Saad Hariri? The new premier, Najib Mikati, a billionaire (many are, although this one was a wealthy man before he took over the government), immediately appeared on television to tell the Lebanese that these were merely indictments, not proofs of guilt. It was important, he said, "to be patient and rational".

This, of course, is a tall order. The largest religious community in Lebanon are the Shia (to whom the Hezbollah are loyal), the second largest the Sunni (to whom the Hariris belong).

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So the one thing the country did not need right now were these indictments from the UN.

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The squeeze on Assad The regime of Bashar Assad is tottering. His fall would probably trigger a short-term surge in violence, but a better government would emerge Economist,Jun 30th 2011 | DAMASCUS

IT WAS the biggest meeting of its kind for decades: under the watchful eye of President Bashar Assad’s security goons, 150 dissidents, veteran opposition figures and former political prisoners met in Damascus on June 27th to denounce the regime’s brutality and demand a peaceful transition to democracy. The street protesters dismissed the conference as a compromise with the regime. They want no truck with it. “We hate the government,” says one young man who was detained and tortured. “That’s all that counts now.” Other demonstrators parody Muammar Qaddafi’s threat to hunt down opponents “alley by alley”. “Alley by alley, house by house,” they chant, “We want your head, O Bashar.” But the Damascus meeting, and uprisings in towns such as Hama and Deir ez-Zor, shows that Syria’s opposition has gone from being a few scattered groups holding spontaneous, isolated protests in March to become a nationwide force.

More than 100,000 people now demonstrate every Friday and the regime cannot rein them in, though it has closed roads to restive towns, reinforced the borders and restricted access to the internet. Demonstrations have been held in at least 150 towns and villages in all corners of the triangle-shaped country. Malls and souks are deserted. Cafés are half-full, the smell of cardamom coffee and cherry tobacco spicing the habitués’ anxious questions.

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Will Syria end like Egypt and Tunisia? It seems unlikely, at least in the short run. In those countries the army sided with the protesters, whereas in Syria it has not. Might Syria follow Libya’s example? So far, there are no signs of a regional split. What about Iran, which brutally and successfully crushed a revolt in 2009 and which is a close Syrian ally? Even that is different. Iran is run by an elected government (though the poll was rigged), not a single family. It has endless oil reserves; its sectarian divide is minor and its security forces more sophisticated. Syria’s have so far killed 1,500 people, ten times as many as in Iran. Most significantly, the Assad regime—half a dozen family members call the shots—has acted erratically. Bashar, the president, swings between brutal crackdowns and vacuous concessions. That does not bode well for a dictator under pressure.

In contrast, Syria’s opposition is becoming more coherent, as well as more widespread. It is centred on a youth movement based outside the capital. Its detractors are right when they say that few articulate leaders have emerged, no formal structures exist and many of the demonstrations have taken place outside big cities.

But this is no peasant revolt. It has the support of large parts of the Sunni Muslim clergy. University graduates and longstanding dissidents, on the fringes at first, now march alongside day labourers. Political parties are being revived, including a Liberal Party which was stillborn six years ago. The city of Hama—site of a massacre of protesters ordered by Mr Assad’s father in 1982—slipped briefly out of official control in May. In recent days the security forces seem to have withdrawn from the city altogether.

The protesters are resilient partly because they are organising themselves into many small groups. Activists are setting up cells of about 20 people, connected to each other by only one leader. Some networks rely on the anonymity of the internet. But with only about a fifth of Syrians online, traditional bonds are more important. Tribal, professional and collegiate relationships of trust are harder to shut down than phone lines.

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But if their organisation is loose, the protesters show a remarkable unity of purpose. They want what everyone in the Arab spring wants: elections, freedom of speech and assembly, protected status for minorities, an end to the regime’s repression. Some organisers have asked eminent economists for advice on market reforms. They show political sophistication by talking of a “civil” democracy, not a “secular” one. To many Muslims, secular means godless and wayward.

If the demonstrators were to topple the government, they could draw on capable technocrats to form an interim administration. Among them is Abdullah Dardari, a former deputy prime minister and senior United Nations official, who is liked from Washington to Riyadh. He was Mr Assad’s chief economic reformer until he was fired soon after the protests started—a target for the regime’s hardliners and a scapegoat for its failings.

In the past the Assads have relied on public indifference as well as outright repression. Syrians used to look at neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq and conclude that stability mattered more than freedom. But the killing of so many countrymen this year is changing that view. “We have become citizens, when once we were sheep,” says a middle-class Damascene. Fear of the security forces, which once kept millions at home, is ebbing. No authoritarian state can survive a sustained decline in its authority—and the government’s writ is shrinking visibly. The police no longer issue speeding tickets or parking fines. Unlicensed traders in the souks—once chased away—now occupy prime spots. Illegal construction is rampant. “Everyone is adding a new floor to their house,” says a home owner. “Officials no longer object.”

Above all, the killings and detentions are failing to cow the protesters. Torture victims have become protest organisers. At an underground meeting in June, one of many victims of the regime described being doused in cold water before being electrocuted by cables attached to his genitals. His aim—to inspire, not scare, the protesters—seemed to be achieved.

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The momentum of change may accelerate soon. Ramadan begins in early August and many Syrians will then start to visit their mosques, rallying points for the demonstrations, daily, rather than weekly. The protest leaders think this may prove a turning point: “Friday every day,” they say.

Many Western observers are sympathetic to the protesters but sceptical of their strength and coherence. What matters more is the regime itself. Its power is fast eroding. It could collapse under the weight of its own failings.

Brick wall aheadThe immediate threat comes from the economy. Business activity is down by about half, according to entrepreneurs and analysts. A company selling car-engine oil has seen sales drop by 80%. “And this is not a luxury product,” says one of the owners. Most firms have sacked employees or cut pay or both. According to rough estimates, unemployment has doubled this year from about 10%. Officials worry that grain supplies are low and food shortages could come soon. Trade is down between 30% and 70%, depending on where you are, and that was before a new round of sanctions imposed by the European Union, Syria’s biggest trading partner. Foreign investment, on which Syrian growth has been built in recent years, has dried up. In a recent speech, Mr Assad talked about the threat of “economic collapse”.

Public finances are in deep trouble. The president has raised government salaries and various subsidies to appease the populace. He cannot afford to do this. The government will probably print the money to meet its promises, so runaway inflation is likely, further fuelling popular anger as cash deposits become worthless.

Capital flight is rampant. Drivers on the roads into Lebanon talk of clients going from their bank in Damascus straight to one in Beirut, carrying large bags. According to one estimate, $20 billion has left the country since March, putting pressure on the Syrian pound. To slow capital flight, the government has raised interest

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rates. A phone company controlled by the Assad family sent out messages urging people to put money back into their accounts.

But a run on the banks cannot be ruled out. Over the past few years, about 60% of lending in Syria has been for people to buy their own cars. Many can no longer keep up with payments. A leading financier says, “If one of the smaller banks defaults, we all go down.” Some branches are even displaying millions of dollars—in bundles of notes piled head high—to reassure worried customers. Some keep enough cash in the vaults to repay almost half their depositors on the spot.

“We are heading for a brick wall,” says a man responsible for several percentage points of GDP. With the regime bust, the elite is likely to be asked to bail it out. Rami Makhlouf, Syria’s richest man and the president’s cousin, said as much during a recent press conference. Having pledged to give up part of his wealth, he added: “I call upon Syrian business leaders to follow this example because our nation is in need of support. The time has come for giving rather than taking.”

But Syria’s captains of industry are asking whether they must “go down with the ship”, as one puts it. Some are taking their children out of private schools in Damascus to send them abroad. One prominent businessman who long flaunted his closeness to the president has given a Western ambassador a list of his supposed disagreements with the regime. “For my file,” he says. Another has been donating blood to support the protesters. In Homs, the country’s third city, businesses have started paying protesters’ expenses.

The central compact of the Assad regime is breaking down. The president’s family is from a minority Muslim sect, the Alawites, who are rank outsiders in Syria, accounting for around 10% of the population. His father seized power in 1970 and struck a bargain with the richest merchants, who are mostly from the Sunni majority, who make up 75%. In return for political support, the regime pledged to protect their wealth. The merchants got rich but

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few warmed to the Assads or their Alawite cronies, who have behaved like mafiosi, demanding a slice of every pie. Now a growing number of merchants believes the regime has become bad for business. They think that rather than ensuring stability, it is the main cause of instability, deliberately stoking sectarian tensions to scare people off the street.

Other parts of the Assad coalition are wobbling, too. Christians, numbering around 10%, have long backed the regime, calculating that they are better off with the Alawites than they would be under majority Sunni rule. But that too may be changing. Christian leaders who were fervently backing the regime a month ago are now more cautious. They still fear being targeted if civil strife erupted. But it is no longer clear the Alawites would protect them. Some Christians have joined protests.

Syria’s sizeable Kurdish minority (about 10% of the population) is also trying to work out who would best serve their interests. The regime has offered to return the citizenship which it took away from some of them in 1963. Iraqi Kurdish leaders, including President Jalal Talabani, whose people across the border have won autonomy, have been giving advice. Some Syrian Kurds are demonstrating against the regime—though they (and the protest leaders) are wary of making the opposition seem like an ethnic uprising.

Even the Assads’ own Alawite minority is not guaranteed to support the regime. If there were a civil war they would no doubt stick together. But Alawite families provide some of the most prominent dissidents, including a poet called Adonis, Aref Dalila, an economist, and Louay Hussein, a writer and activist. Although the Assads have looked after their own relatives, most Alawites remain desperately poor. Some villages in their home region near the Turkish border do not have running water. Their leaders are said to have quietly contacted Sunni imams to seek security guarantees in return for abandoning the Assads.

Reform, repression or regional war?

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Indeed, the only people the regime can really count on seem to be the security forces. The top brass—mostly staffed by Alawite loyalists—has given no hint of switching sides. And now that they have spilled so much blood, their options are limited. Even so, months of cracking down are taking a toll. In some hotspots troops are short of rations and depend on local people for food. Expanding operations further will be difficult. A number of units are being kept out of the fight because they are not trusted, especially ones filled with Sunnis. Manaf Tlass, a senior commander in the elite Republican Guard and son of a former defence minister, is staying home for unknown reasons.

According to some analysts, only a quarter of the total armed forces of roughly 400,000 is well equipped and ready to fight—and of these, only half, or 50,000 men, is really reliable. Twice that number is demonstrating each week. So far, the regime has been lucky in that the uprisings have been sequential, moving from one place to the next. If the protesters rose up at once, the regime could lose control. That is beginning to happen.

So what next? One possibility is that the regime might change course and try to reform. It has made a number of promises to protesters, such as new laws on political parties, elections in August and a reduction of the privileged status of the ruling Baath party. It has called a “national dialogue summit” for mid-July to talk about these. But such promises sound insincere. It is not clear who might attend the summit (the opposition says the crackdown must stop first). The president has been talking about political reform for a decade. Given the bloodshed, his promises would almost certainly be too little, too late—even if they were fulfilled, which they may not be. The regime seems incapable of opening up. Amnesties are followed by waves of arrests. The president’s cult of personality has grown since the protests started. Reform would anger the security services, his only loyal allies. “They are playing for time and trying to take the wind out of the demonstrations,” says one observer in Damascus. But “the system cannot be reformed,” says a former top official, bluntly.

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So might the regime go the other way, attempting harsher crackdowns and targeting churches and mosques—perhaps through proxies—to divide and rule the sects? A growing number of citizens are arming themselves. Future tussles with the security forces are likely to result in many more deaths. But a violent meltdown is not inevitable. The Alawites seem unlikely to start a civil war. They are a small minority and would probably withdraw to their mountain redoubt if under existential threat. They might seek to provoke communal or religious clashes. But Syria has seen no big communal clash since 1862, when Muslims burned down Christian houses in Damascus. You might think that Syria could see an Islamist takeover. But, when the Muslim Brotherhood was a legitimate political party in the 1950s, it got only 3-6% of parliamentary seats. Even government insiders—with an interest in playing up the threat—estimate that the brothers would get at most 15% today.

Perhaps the regime could try to start a regional war to distract from problems at home? It could attack Israel directly or via its ally Hizbullah in Lebanon. It could ask for more Iranian support than it already gets, even at the risk of drawing in Saudi Arabia on the side of the opposition. The region’s main faultlines would then be starkly exposed: Arabs v Persians, Jews against the rest. But the Middle East is always full of such talk. It rarely amounts to much (though when it does the consequences are terrible). Iran, Israel, Hizbullah and Saudi Arabia all stand to lose a great deal from an all-out conflict in Syria. The Assad regime has long seen its backing for the Palestinian cause as a source of prestige at home and in the region. But among other Arabs (including many Palestinians), the Syrian regime is coming to be seen as toxic, not just for its brutality but for what many think has been its cynical manipulation of the Palestinian issue.

Lastly, might the Syrian regime split or change from within? Sunni officers staged three coups in quick succession after independence in 1946. The chances of that happening again are small. Among the Assads, Bashar’s is the most acceptable public

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face. There seems little mileage in ditching him. The Assads have been anticipating coups for 40 years and have cleverly compartmentalised the security forces.

So perhaps the best outcome would be some form of negotiated transition under international auspices. Turkey, a one-time ally of the Assads, is working on a deal that would save the family face and give the Sunnis more power. Ahmet Davutoglu, its foreign minister, is due to visit Syria soon. Russia, which has a naval base near Tartus, is also taking a keen interest. A bargain could be struck if (when?) the regime loses control over parts of the country. Protesters might take over one or more cities like Hama. Some villages and valleys are already barricading themselves in.

A Syrian denouement may not yet be imminent but the regime is tottering. The extraordinary endurance of demonstrators week after week is paying off. Patience has been the key to many challenges to the ancient thrones of Damascus. On a visit 150 years ago Mark Twain wrote wryly of the three-millennia-old city: “She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires, and will see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies.”

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The cult of Bashar al-Assad As a teacher in Syria I saw the effect of Assad's culture of fear, but his regime is pandering to social sensibilitiesJoseph Willits,Guardian1 July 2011,

The events now happening in Syria seemed a remote prospect when I arrived to teach English at an international school in Homs last year. Even when regime change came to Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year, few expected anything of the kind to occur in Syria.

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Looking at my students, I could scarcely imagine them as revolutionaries. They seemed so bound to the 40-year-old Ba'athist ideology, emasculated by the cult of Bashar al-Assad while monitored by social sensibilities.

In school each day, we pledged our allegiance to Ba'athism, to Assad and to a sense of unique Arab nationalism. One line of the national anthem always stuck with me: "Our den of Arabism is a sacred sanctuary."

Yes, Syria was a sanctuary. In this sanctuary's educational institutions dissent was frowned upon and a culture of fear flourished. What might revolution mean to these teenage Syrians, and how would they respond to it?

On the surface, for many of my students it would mean nothing. They were mostly from the top shelves of Syrian society – Alawite, Christian and Muslim – the products of politics and business rather than defined by sectarianism. Their hopes would lie mostly within the system and for them the struggle for bread was an alien prospect. A year later, though, the profiles of similar young Syrians are all over Facebook – some frightened, others more hopeful, proud, naively and deliberately deluded. Sometimes a black screen replaces a photo of them with friends, for anonymity, for mourning, or just out of caution, wisely hedging their bets. Other profiles feature a "pray for Homs" poster, or a picture of the president himself.

Their comments range from tentative to accusatory – directed at the "terrorists" who are said to be destroying Assad's Syria. One compares the sounds of shooting with the celebratory sounds of Eid in the early hours. Another remarks: "I simply cannot sleep."

Those who originally posted controversial, apparently anti-Assad sentiment, have withdrawn in fright. Their Facebook protests have become dormant and their daily facade is basketball, friends and Ba'athism. Their resistance, however, remains.

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I would never have imagined, while teaching in Homs, and even in the beginning of protests in the city, that my students would become directly affected. Like the majority of my students, Ameen al-Khateeb was a declared fan of the president and his wife on Facebook, and proud to be Syrian.

"In Bashar we trust" was a dictum that resonated for him, yet the bullets of the regime hit his school bus, killing his 10-year-old sister. Still he appears loyal to the president, as do many others, but a wariness of online activity and dissent has encouraged more engagement in street protests.

The culture of fear, which generations of Syrians have grown up with, can never be underestimated. Assad's speech on 20 June, heaping blame upon foreign "saboteurs", angered so many, prompting more protests, yet reassured others with familiar statements. Those who were brave protested on the streets; those who were fearful maintained their silence, perhaps waiting for the tide to blow over.

I questioned an Alawite friend of mine about the situation in Homs when serious protests first began. "You know we live in a peaceful country," she said, accusing al-Jazeera of heading a media ambush against the regime. Her words, like those in Assad's speech, and so many I knew in Homs, simply echoed one another and the party line. I knew Syria was peaceful; a wonderful example of a prison camp fit for tourists, teachers and Lawrence of Arabia wannabes – and all overlooked by images of Assad in various poses.

As I walked daily around the streets my eyes were always drawn to the posters of the regime's propaganda, mesmerised myself by the cult of Assad. I quickly learned the boundaries of conversations about the president.

My joking insinuation that Assad could be my lookalike if I only had a moustache sparked controversy. Foreigners are told to be careful when mentioning the president, since any hint of disrespect

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can be construed as mocking and spiteful. In an attempt to relate to and share with my students, I told them that both Asma al-Assad (the president's wife) and I attended King's College London. This was met with deathly silence – as if I had been trying to put myself on a par with her.

In a sense, however, I felt that the cult of Assad disguised the real issue – that Syria was a society made up of various and contrasting social sensibilities, heavily exploited by the Ba'athist regime.

In Damascus, over the past five years, an arts scene had begun to flourish, and yet a performance of Romeo and Juliet was censored at a school in Homs: on stage, the loving couple looked at one another gormlessly, their kiss having been taken away from them. In this case it wasn't Ba'athism stifling expression, but society itself.

Through education the regime could both pander to social sensibilities and alienate the more socially conservative elements. Those who displayed symbols of faith, contrary to the regime's secular image, could become targets. A colleague of mine (choosing to wear the hijab, against the wishes of her exiled father who recognised the implications of this symbol) became the subject of gossip, initiated by the school itself.

Fears of the Muslim Brotherhood and paranoia stemming from the 1982 massacre in Hama were seemingly ingrained into the Ba'athist machine. Students are still being taught to fear repercussions. In Hama in 1982, internet dissent was not an issue. In Homs today, teenage Syrians are logging on, sometimes as themselves, sometimes as products of the regime – mostly we shall never know which.

I cannot condemn those who put pictures of Assad on to Facebook, whether out of pride or self-preservation, nor can I demand that the revolutionaries of whatever cause come clean and stand tall. I was there, among them. I know how it feels.

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Clinton warns Syria's Assad that time is running out Speaking at a democracy conference in Lithuania, Clinton said that the US – which has long sought to engage Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – is looking for 'actions, not words.'Ariel Zirulnick, Staff writer Christian Science Monitor,July 1, 2011,

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned the Syrian government Friday that it was running out of time to implement reforms and that without action, it would only face further resistance.

"It is absolutely clear that the Syrian government is running out of time. They are either going to allow a serious political process that will include peaceful protests to take place throughout Syria and engage in a productive dialogue with members of the opposition and civil society, or they're going to continue to see increasingly organized resistance," Secretary Clinton said at a news conference in Lithuania, Reuters reports.

Clinton is there for a conference with international democracy organization Communities for Democracy.

"We regret the loss of life and we regret the violence, but this choice is up to the Syrian government. And, right now, we're looking for action not words and we haven't seen enough of that," she said.

Allowing the opposition to meet once – they held a conference in Damascus earlier this week – is an inadequate response to protesters' demands, she said, particularly since it happened as government troops continued their crackdown in northern Syria. "It doesn't appear that there's a coherent and consistent message coming from Syria," she said.

Human rights groups say that the death toll since protests first erupted in March numbers about 1,500, according to Reuters. Opposition groups have rejected a government offer to meet in

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Damascus later this month, saying that the proposed talks lack credibility when violence continues elsewhere in the country, The Telegraph reports.

A two-day siege in northern Syria that ended Thursday left 19 people dead while troops spread throughout the border region, the Associated Press reports. The troops are in the area to prevent more Syrians from fleeing to Turkey. More than 10,000 have fled so far, but only five made it across on Thursday – the lowest number in many days, according to Turkish officials.

Meanwhile, protests have started in the northwestern city of Aleppo, with several hundred demonstrators and at least two separate protests, AP reports.

The demonstration appeared far smaller than those that take place in other Syrian cities, but its importance lies in Aleppo's status as the country's second largest city, where much of Syria's small middle class lives.

Activists said the regime feared that if Aleppo's residents threw their weight behind the anti-government protests, they could badly shake Assad's regime.

The Guardian reported Thursday that the US is discreetly pushing a "roadmap" for reforms that leaves President Bashar al-Assad in power. The draft document was reportedly circulated at the opposition conference this week. The US denies backing the document. A State Department spokesman said: "We are encouraging genuine dialogue between the opposition and the regime but we are not promoting anything. We want to see a democratic Syria but this is in the hands of the Syrian people."

The roadmap demands accountability for violently disbursing protests, compensation for families of those killed, legalization of protests, media freedom, and the establishment of a national assembly, among other changes.

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Because the document keeps President Assad in power, it is being rejected by many members of the opposition.

Quiet US interest in the roadmap dovetails with public demands from Washington that Assad reform or step down. Robert Ford, the US ambassador, has been urging opposition figures to talk to the regime, said Radwan Ziadeh, a leading exile, who insisted the strategy would not work. "They are asking Bashar to lead the transition and this is not acceptable to the protesters," he said. "It is too late."

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Political Parties Divide Syria’s Kurdish Youth BASSAM MUSTAFA,Rudwa (Kurdish newspaper publishing from Kurdstan)01/07/2011,

Kurdish youth in Syria have been active in anti-regime protests since they erupted in mid-March but have little connection to or backing from political parties, a Syrian Kurdish writer and activist says.

Ciwan Yusuf, the spokesperson for the Sawa Youth Coalition, said the weakness of the political parties – some of which discouraged young people from participating in the demonstrations – helped give rise to the youth movement.

There are currently four Kurdish groups in Qamishlu alone: the Revolutionary Youth, Jizre Civil Society, the Kurdish Youth Accord and Sawa.

“These groups were active in the past as well, especially in culture,” said Yusuf during a phone interview with Rudaw from Qamishlu. “But as the revolution began in Syria we took a step forward and even changed our name to Sawa Youth Coalition.”

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Yusuf said Syria’s Kurdish youth had waited for an opportunity like this for a long time, but in order to not make the regime suspicious, they worked under the guise of cultural activities.

“We all knew that one day Syria would change,” Yusuf said. “That was why we were already an organized group.”

Syrian Kurdish parties have not taken a united or clear stance on the political upheaval in Syria and according to Yusuf the parties have hampered the efforts of the youth groups.

“We at Sawa made it clear from the very beginning that we are part of the political process and street movement, yet belong to no political group.” Yusuf said. “But the political parties stood against us and tore our movements apart. They support us in their official statements but their deeds prove otherwise.”

A few Kurdish parties however, have directly backing to the youth movement, Yusuf said. Among them are the Freedom Party, the Kurdish Union Party and the Future Movement.

“They are participating in the demonstrations with us; they work with us and from the beginning their position has been much better than that of the other parties.”

Kurdish youth movements are active in the cities of Amude, Efrin, Damascus and Aleppo.

Barzan Bahram, a writer from Syrian Kurdistan, said the youth there have played a major role from the beginning.

“From the beginning of the Syrian revolution the youth worked closely together. They wanted to unite and speak on behalf of the Kurds in Syria,” Bahram said.

At the same time, Bahram blamed Kurdish political groups for dividing the Kurdish youth and driving them apart.

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Yusuf also said he tried to merge his coalition with the Revolutionary Youth Movement, but had no success.

“The reason I didn’t succeed is inference by our political parties and youth in Europe,” he said. “But the main reason is the dictatorship of the Syrian regime. In any case, we are working together well.”

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Davutoglu to go on Mideast tour, including Syria TODAY'S ZAMAN WITH WIRES, ISTANBUL01 July 2011, Friday

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto?lu said on Thursday that he is preparing for a tour of the Middle East where mass anti-regime demonstrations have rocked the region since January and toppled two regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. Davuto?lu told reporters in Montenegro that he is planning to visit Syria as part of his Middle East tour. The Turkish foreign minister is currently in Budva, Montenegro, representing Turkey at a meeting of the heads of state and government of the Southeast European Cooperation Process (SEECP).

“We have conveyed our advice openly to the Syrian government behind closed doors. What we wish is the immediate launch of a reform process in Syria and an end to violence. We are ready to do whatever is within our capacity in order to achieve that," he said as quoted by the Anatolia news agency.

Davuto?lu's other stops on his Mideast tour are expected to include Jordan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Davuto?lu also said he is representing President Abdullah Gül, who could not come to the SEECP summit because of a busy schedule due to the ongoing process of forming a new government in Ankara. He added that Turkey is closely monitoring events in

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Syria and that wherever he is in the world, one of his “ears listen to the Middle East and Syria.”

He dismissed claims that Turkey is playing both sides and said Turkey is very sincere in what it says. Stressing that Turkey has never had a double agenda, Davuto?lu said this idea is unacceptable, particularly with respect to Syria.

“We have always behaved openly. We have made our recommendations behind closed doors with courage. Messages that we delivered in public were also obvious. A solution that our hearts and minds envision is the start to the reform process with a timetable and an immediate end to the violence. We will continue to do our best for this,” Davuto?lu said.

Speaking about his meetings on the sidelines of the summit, Davuto?lu said he had numerous talks with foreign ministers and heads of state from Balkan countries, largely discussing bilateral relations and trade cooperation. Briefing reporters on his meetings with Serbian President Boris Tadic and Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, Davuto?lu said he is also planning to tour the Balkans soon with a stop in Belgrade.

Davuto?lu stated that he mainly discussed trade relations between Turkey and Bulgaria with Borisov and that the two countries have agreed to establish a High Level Strategic Cooperation Council. The foreign minister further said he met, for the first time, his Greek counterpart, Stavros Lambrinidis, and that they agreed to hold a High Level Strategic Cooperation Council meeting either in July or September.

The Turkish FM also met with Albanian President Bamir Topi and Macedonian President George Ivanov in Budva on Thursday before he departed the country for ?stanbul where he had a meeting with his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle.

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Failing to move Russia, EU and US slam Syria at UN Mandate for UN observer force in Golan Heights renewed for another 6 months with support of all 15 council members. Jerusalem Post (original story is by Reuters)01/07/2011 UNITED NATIONS - Europe and the United States heaped criticism on Syria at the United Nations on Thursday after failing to persuade Russia to support condemning Damascus for its crackdown on anti-government protesters.

The occasion was the renewal of the mandate for a UN observer force in the Golan Heights. As expected, a resolution renewing the mandate for another six months until the end of this year received unanimous support from all 15 council members.

Normally the mandate renewal for the four-decade old force, known as UNDOF, is a routine event without fanfare or controversy. This year the situation was different as US and European Union diplomats tried to include language condemning Syrian "human rights abuses" in the initial US-drafted text.

Russia, backed by China, threatened to veto UNDOF's mandate renewal if such language was included. In the end, the resolution expressed "grave concern at the serious events that occurred in UNDOF's area of operations on 15 May and 5 June [Nakba and Naksa Day riots] that put the long held ceasefire in jeopardy."

Although it referred to the Golan Heights incidents, in which a number of Palestinian protesters were killed, it made no mention of the Syrian crackdown against demonstrators, which human rights activists say resulted in over 1,300 civilian deaths since the uprisings began in March.

"The question of Syria and the renewal of UNDOF's mandate are two distinct issues," Xinhua news agency quoted Wang Min, deputy permanent representative of the Chinese Mission to the United Nations, as saying.

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"They should not be linked together so as to avoid complicating and politicizing the renewal of UNDOF's mandate," Wang added.

"Israel deeply appreciates the work of UNDOF," Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor told the UN Security Council.

Deputy US Ambassador to the United Nations Rosemary DiCarlo said that Syria had engineered the Golan Heights protests, which the Syrian government said resulted in the deaths of 23 people, as a "transparent ploy" to divert attention from its brutal crackdown on demonstrators.

Deputy British Ambassador Philip Parham said Damascus has ignored calls for it to heed calls for change and reform.

"Instead, they have met legitimate demands for reform with brute force in which an estimated 1,400 people have died in the last 3 months," he said. "This is completely unacceptable."

French Deputy Ambassador Martin Briens also condemned what he said were Syria's "hypocritical" attempts to "divert international attention away from the aspirations of its own people on whom it is inflicting a bloody crackdown."

Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari dismissed the criticism of his country, saying his government was committed to reform and was not cracking down on innocent protesters.

"Some extremists have started using violence and bearing arms against law-and-order forces and against innocent Syrian citizens, including peaceful demonstrators," he said, adding that these were "internal developments that have nothing to do with the Security Council."Russian Deputy Ambassador Alexander Pankin made clear Moscow had not budged on the topic of Syria, long a close Russian ally, and saw no need for council action.

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"Syria is not on the agenda of the Security Council because it is not a threat to international peace and security," he said.

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Coalition of Factions From the Streets Fuels a New Opposition in SyriaBy ANTHONY SHADIDNYTIMES,30 June 2011,

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An opposition drawing its strength from Syria’s restive streets has begun to emerge as a pivotal force in the country’s once-dormant politics, organizing across disparate regions through the Internet, reaching out to fearful religious minorities and earning the respect of more recognized, but long divided dissidents.

The Local Coordination Committees, as they call themselves, have become the wild cards in what is shaping up as a potentially decisive stage in Syria, with some protests spreading Thursday to Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, and the government tentatively reaching out to the opposition next week. The success of the young protesters may determine whether that change is incremental, as the government has suggested, or far more sweeping, as the protesters themselves have demanded.

Their success has stemmed from an ability to stay decentralized, work in secret and fashion their message in the most nationalist of terms. But that very success has made them a mystery to the Syrian government, which prefers to work with more recognized opposition figures who came together in a rare meeting in Damascus on Monday. American officials admit they are also trying to gauge the young protesters’ importance in a time of tumult.

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“For so long, the opposition was in quotes — ‘the Syrian opposition,’ ” said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It wasn’t coalesced or organized; it was more oppositionists or activists. Now it’s a real opposition, and even if they have multiple levels, they get the need to organize and come with a unified voice.”

As in other Arab revolts, new dynamics have emerged as the demonstrations in Syria have gathered momentum in past weeks, particularly in cities like Homs and Hama. The youthful demonstrators who make up these coordination committees have bridged divides of sect, religion and class to try to formulate a leadership. As in Egypt, they were able to build on years of local dissidence that had already created informal networks of friends and colleagues.

“Reporting the news, that’s how we started,” said Rami Nakhle, an activist in Damascus who fled to Lebanon this year and helps organize the committees’ work.

Even before the uprising, activists had smuggled in cellphones, satellite modems and computers in the event that the demands for change across the Arab world spread to Syria. They did, and even in the earliest days, activists there managed to offer a narrative of the uprising that was revealing, incomplete and — in the government’s mind at least — biased. In the weeks that ensued, protesters said, activists coalesced into committees that reached out to one another.

Mr. Nakhle said the first committee arose in Daraya, a restless suburb of Damascus, and the best-organized are in Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, which has emerged as a nexus of the uprising. There, activists came together in committees in the revolt’s second week, with eventually 22 people helping coordinate as many as 100 people on the ground to document the demonstrations, said Omar Idlibi, a spokesman for the committees who helped organize the work in Homs before fleeing to Lebanon.

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“It was like a small news agency,” he said.

American officials and activists say that, nationwide, 100 to 200 people are fully engaged in the committees, with the majority of them overwhelmingly young. Across Syria, as many as 35 activists who are acknowledged as committee leaders try to communicate by Internet chat room each day at 10 a.m., though only 25 log on at any one time. Committees have charted different directions: in Hama, activists have occupied the city’s Aasi Square in nightly protests; in Duma, a Damascus suburb, the committee has sought to begin a campaign of civil disobedience, urging residents to stop paying water, electricity and phone bills.

Across the country, activists say many of the members, fearing arrest, do not take part in the protests themselves and, more often than not, carry on with day jobs. One said he was a lawyer, another a real estate agent. One who identified himself as a 23-year-old civil engineering student named Ali said he spent 15 hours a day online.

“We live and work in the virtual world, not the street,” he said.

Already, the local committees have faced sometimes bitter divisions. Separate groups have coalesced around two prominent women, Razan Zeitouneh and Suheir al-Atassi. A third group has tried to organize the Kurdish minority, which mainly lives in the east. There is also a debate over to what degree the committees reflect or drive the protests, which still seem largely spontaneous, even after months of organizing.

But in past weeks, the committees’ profiles have grown sharply, as they seize a mantle of dissent that a divided exiled opposition, sometimes tainted by links to the United States and other countries, cannot claim. Prominent dissidents in Damascus like Louay Hussein, Aref Dalila and Faez Sara are respected but speak largely for themselves.

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“We are in dire need for young new leaders. They are our only hope in the future,” Mr. Hussein said. “The local committees have started to improve their political performance and their coordination. They are not just only organizing street protests and running the media campaign. They’ve started to become more politically sophisticated.”

In statements, one of which Mr. Nakhle said took a month to prepare, the committees have reached out to minorities in a remarkably diverse country. The coordination among cities has created solidarities that never existed — with a poor and neglected region in southern Syria known as the Houran or between cities with historic rivalries, like Homs and Hama. To a remarkable degree, their demands were echoed in the statement that followed Monday’s opposition meeting.

“This is a new generation, and they don’t have to learn from anyone,” said Peter Harling, an analyst with the International Crisis Group who is based in Damascus. Syrian officials have promised what they describe as a period of reform, though many analysts and diplomats suggest their vision goes no farther than Egypt under President Hosni Mubarak: a ruling party that tolerates feeble but legal opposition parties, a measure of freedom of expression and a critical press, a loud but ineffectual Parliament, and security services that may undergo some reforms but are still riddled with corruption.

Even a step in that direction requires an interlocutor, and so far, the Syrian government has made clear it views recognized dissidents like Mr. Hussein as its potential partners. Those same figures fear alienating the committees, and in interview after interview, they have warned that they cannot speak on behalf of the protesters.

The result, as many have pointed out, is the emergence of a dangerous stalemate that runs the risk of militarizing an opposition. Residents say the price of weapons has gone up in Homs, and American officials acknowledge an embryonic

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insurgency that seems most pronounced in the northwest, where the Syrian military has staged more operations, killing — by activists’ count — 19 people in two days.

“The government seems to be focused on the prominent activists,” the American official said. “It doesn’t seem to grasp the significance of the local coordination committees yet. I haven’t seen any evidence that they’re paying attention to them.”

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Syrian student protesters rounded up, beaten The Washington Post, Friday, July 1,

Around 100 peaceful protesters calling for freedom were met with police and baton-wielding security forces Thursday at Damascus University.

Students gathered outside the faculty of economics in the Baramkeh area of Damascus minutes after 3pm today calling for freedom. Dozens more students joined together with the small group as the chanting became more forceful. One female protester managed to unfurl a flag before police and security forces charged on the crowd.

A Washington Post correspondent at the scene reported students being led away by plain-clothes security forces into police and military vehicles.

“You want freedom? I’ll show you freedom after a while,” a security officer was heard telling a student who was being led away in handcuffs.

Other demonstrators were seen pinned against sidewalks and being beaten with batons. Bystanders looked on in amazement.

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Panicked students fled into nearby shops and down residential alleyways. One protester, whose face was bloodied, told the Post correspondent he couldn’t find several of his friends and feared for their safety.

The university campus was closed off immediately after the protest as police searched for hiding protesters. On Thursday evening, police and army cars patrolled the university area.

Universities in Damascus have been under careful watch by the authorities since March, when protests demanding the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad began. Entrances to all faculty buildings are under 24-hour armed guard.

Activists say more than 10,000 people have been detained since anti-government demonstrations broke out. About 1,400 people are reported to have been killed in the ensuing government crackdown.

HOME PAGE Yedioth Ahronoth: 'Israel lost flotilla war'..

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