Assad Announces General Amnesty, Opposition Says ‘Not Enough’

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday decreed a general amnesty for Muslim Brotherhood members and political prisoners after two months of deadly anti-regime protests, the official SANA news agency reported.

"President Assad has by decree issued an amnesty on all crimes committed before May 31, 2011," it reported. "The amnesty applies to all political prisoners as well as to the Muslim Brotherhood."

But Assad’s move was swiftly brushed aside by Syrian opposition activists gathered in Turkey for a three-day meeting aimed at discussing democratic change and voicing support for the revolt against the Syrian regime.

The activists described the general amnesty as "too little too late."

"This measure is insufficient: we demanded this amnesty several years ago, but it's late in coming," said Abdel Razak Eid, an activist from the "Damascus Declaration," a reformist group launched in 2005 to demand democratic change.

"We are united under the slogan: the people want the fall of the regime and all those who have committed crimes brought to account. Blood will not have been spilled in vain," he said.

The release of political prisoners has been a central demand of protesters who, inspired by uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, have since March 15 been staging almost daily demonstrations against Assad's autocratic government.

The head of the Muslim Brotherhood delegation at the meeting, Melhem al-Durubi, similarly dismissed the amnesty announcement.

"The Brotherhood joins with the Syrian people in calling for the fall of the regime," he said.

"We demand freedom and the fall of the regime," the Islamist leader said, as the audience chanted: "The people want the fall of the regime," and "Death before humiliation."

Assad’s decree is believed to be part of overtures by the Syrian regime to the opposition, largely seen as symbolic. Thousands of people have been arrested in the government's crackdown on a two-month-old popular uprising.

Human rights groups say over 1,000 protesters have been killed.

Earlier, a senior official in the ruling Baath party said that a committee for national dialogue in the troubled country would be set up within 48 hours, the daily Al-Watan reported.

The newspaper, which is close to the government, quoted party number two Mohammed Said Bkhetan as telling a Baath party meeting that the committee's members would be wide-ranging.

"The committee for dialogue is composed of all political currents, and people from political and economic life and society in general will take part," it quoted him as saying.

"The mechanisms of the dialogue will be announced within 48 hours," he said.

Bkhetan said the number of people protesting in Syria was no more than 100,000, out of an overall population of around 22 million.

"It's the same people demonstrating every time. They protest at night, shouting 'Allahu akbar' (God is greatest) as well as every Friday, but we must bring a swift end to this as we are under enormous pressure," he added.

The government insists the unrest is the work of "armed terrorist gangs" backed by Islamists and foreign agitators.

It initially responded to the revolt by offering some concessions, including lifting the state of emergency in place for nearly five decades, but coupled this with a fierce crackdown.

Al-Watan reported that Bkhetan also ruled out abrogating Clause 8 of Syria's constitution, which states that the Baath party is the sole leader of the state and society.

"Any constitutional amendment is the competence of the council of the people" or parliament, in which the Baath party has more than half the number of deputies, he said.

"We have told the opposition that they can abolish this clause if they gain power and we become the opposition," he said.

The third parliamentary election since Assad succeeded his father Hafez in July 2000 is due soon in Syria.