Syria Opposition Chief Says State Bodies Must be Preserved
Syrian anti-regime protesters want to preserve state institutions to avoid repeating the mistakes made in Iraq, opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun said in an interview published on Sunday.
"The opposition is no longer ready to negotiate with murderers," Ghalioun, the head of the Syrian National Council, told Der Spiegel weekly, referring to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
"But it is ready to speak to civil and military authorities who do not represent the regime but institutions," he said.
"We do not wish to repeat the mistakes made in Iraq, we want public institutions, including law and order organs and social peace, to be preserved."
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay, who has said more than 4,000 people have been killed in the government crackdown on dissent, is to brief the U.N. Security Council on Syria at a meeting on Monday.
Ghalioun stressed that "all diplomatic means" had not yet been exhausted in the attempts to resolve the bloody stand-off in Syria.
Source: Agence France Presse
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