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Bashar al-Assad

Arab leaders have called for a political solution to the conflict in Syria, although the Syrian opposition had asked for “sophisticated” arms to tip the balance of power. The regional body, in its final statement issued yesterday after a two-day summit in Kuwait, also condemned the mass killings committed by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the massacres and the mass killing committed by the Syrian regime’s forces against the unarmed people,” said Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry under secretary Khaled al-Jarallah, reading from the statement.

“We call for a political solution to the Syrian crisis in accordance with the Geneva I declaration,” it read.
The head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC), Ahmad al-Jarba, during the opening session of the summit, called on the Arab leaders to exert pressure on the international community “to commit to its pledges to provide sophisticated weapons to our revolutionaries” and increase humanitarian support.

He also criticised the Arab League decision barring the opposition from filling his country’s seat at the bloc’s summit.
“Let me say, quite frankly, that keeping Syria’s seat empty in your midst sends a clear message to Assad that he can kill, and that the seat will wait for him to resolve his war,” Jarba said as he addressed Arab leaders and officials on Tuesday.

The SNC, which was initially approved to replace the Assad government as the representative of Syria in the 22-member bloc, was denied that right after reservations from Lebanon, Iraq and Algeria.

Yesterday’s communique also refused to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and condemned what it called the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinians.
“We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state,” said the declaration.

The Palestinians recognised Israel at the start of the peace process in the early 1990s, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted they now acknowledge it as the national homeland of the Jewish people, in a move which would effectively disregard the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees.

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels have seized control of a tourist site by the Turkish border that allowed them a small foothold by the Mediterranean for the first time since the uprising against al-Assad erupted three years ago, activists said.

Amateur video posted online by activists on Tuesday shows a group of rebels by the sea in the seaside strip known as Samra, some sitting on rocks and raising their guns. “This is the village of Samra, under the rule of rebels,” said the narrator of the video.

Samra straddles the Syria-Turkey border and the Turkish government has allowed Syrian rebels to ship in aid, weapons and men through its border crossing.
Still, Samra has no port, and Syrian military aircraft are likely to bomb rebels trying to use any sea passage.

There was no government confirmation of Samra’s capture.
The capture of Samra came after rebels severed one of the Assad government’s last links to the Turkish border by seizing the Kassab crossing and a predominantly Armenian Christian town of the same name on Sunday.

Activists in Latakia say the rebels’ mission of keeping their new gains in the province is difficult. The regime is so far in control of most of the high hills nearby, making opposition fighters in lower areas an easy target.

On Tuesday, rebels managed to capture a strategic hill known as “Observatory 45”, south of Kassab. Activists said opposition forces would have to capture several other such hills to make it possible to sustain their grip.

Rebels launched their offensive on Friday in Latakia province, the ancestral home of the Assad family and a stronghold of his minority Alawite sect, a Shia offshoot that is one of the main pillars of support for his rule. — Al Jazeera