Syria Opens 'Dialogue' with Opposition Absent

Syria opened a "national dialogue" on Sunday that it hailed as a step towards multi-party democracy after five decades of Baath party rule, but its credibility was undermined by an opposition boycott.

Some 200 delegates, including independent MPs and members of the Baath party, in power since 1963, observed a minute's silence in memory of the "martyrs" before the playing of the national anthem.

But opposition figures boycotted the meeting in protest at the government's continued deadly crackdown on unprecedented protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule that erupted in mid-March.

"We are going to hold a comprehensive national dialogue during which we will announce Syria's transition towards a multi-party democratic state in which everyone will be equal and able to participate in the building of the nation's future," Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said in his opening address.

"This dialogue is beginning at an awkward moment and in a climate of suspicion ... and there are many obstacles, some natural and some manufactured, to a transition towards another point," Sharaa said.

"This dialogue is not a concession by the government to the people but an obligation for every citizen."

Sharaa said that within a week the interior ministry would implement a government decision to "remove all obstacles to any citizen returning to Syria or traveling abroad.

"Circumstances have prevented the full implementation of several laws promulgated recently, including that ending the state of emergency," in force for five decades, the vice president said.

"We need to get out of this vicious circle ... and organizing demonstrations without prior approval is leading to unjustified violence," he said.

"We need to recognize, however, that without the sacrifices made by the Syrian people who have shed blood in more than one province, this meeting could not have been held."

Dissident writer Tayyeb Tizini, who was among the few figures close to the opposition to join the meeting, expressed regret that the government had not halted its crackdown on major protest centers ahead of the dialogue's launch.

"The bullets are still being fired in Homs and Hama. I would have hoped that that would have stopped before the meeting. That's what's necessary," Tizini told delegates.

He called for the "dismantling of the police state."

"That's an absolute prerequisite, because otherwise the police state will sabotage all our efforts to tackle our problems together," he said.

"They should also have freed the thousands of detainees, some of whom have been in prison for years. That would have been a present for the people and the meeting."

Assad announced the dialogue in a keynote speech on June 20, only his third intervention since the protests against his rule erupted.

A Facebook call for nationwide demonstrations against taking part in the dialogue brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets on Friday. Nearly half a million protested in the flashpoint central city of Hama alone.

The official SANA news agency said Assad on Sunday issued a decree naming Anas Naim as the new governor of Hama after firing Ahmed Khaled Abdul Aziz from the post on July 2, a day after huge anti-regime protests labeled the largest ever.

Security forces killed at least 15 people on Friday and arrested more than 200 during the protests held under the banner "No to dialogue," activists said.

The EU's top diplomat Catherine Ashton slammed the "brutal" crackdown on protesters and said it discredited Assad's reform promises.

"I strongly condemn the continued brutal crackdown against peaceful protesters, including by means of large-scale deployments of the Syrian military, in the city of Hama and elsewhere," Ashton said.

"This path of repression and violence discredits the promises by the Syrian leadership and its legitimacy and commitment to reform. Violent repression and dialogue are incompatible," she said, urging Damascus to hold a "genuine national dialogue."

Human rights groups say that since the protests first broke out, the security forces have killed more than 1,300 civilians and arrested at least 12,000.

There has also been an exodus of refugees to neighboring Lebanon and Turkey.