Opposition leader says political solution in Syria not possible without military support

The president of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, Ahmad Al-Jarba, warned that any political solution in Syria will not succeed without first achieving a military balance on the ground. During his address on Tuesday to the Arab League summit in Kuwait, Al-Jarba called on the international community to provide the Free Syrian Army with sophisticated weapons to help tip the balance of forces.

While many Western countries continue to raise alarms over the rising death toll in Syria, military aid has largely been suspended. Foreign Policy magazine reported on Monday that the US State Department is about to deliver “tens of millions of dollars worth of new assistance into Syria, including ambulances, communications gear and Toyota pickup trucks for the country’s beleaguered rebels”. However, the delivery will not include any military support and the report adds that, “the relatively small size of the new aid package is a vivid reminder that the Obama administration is continuing to take a largely hands-off approach to a country in the fourth year of a civil war in which nearly 150,000 people have died.”

During his meeting on Monday with UN Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on the sidelines of the summit, Al-Jarba also called out the regime for the breakdown of the current negotiations, saying: “The regime of Bashar Al-Assad is behind the failure of the Geneva talks.”

Meanwhile, Brahimi announced that he would not call for a third round of talks in Geneva unless he is convinced that the talks would be fruitful. Brahimi pointed out how “many signs indicate that the Syrian regime plans to hold presidential elections mid 2014 contrary to the main principle of the negotiations, which would then be useless.”