EU-DIGEST: Ahead of Paris gathering of Friends of Syria, Bulgaria offers to host next meeting

7/5/12

Ahead of Paris gathering of Friends of Syria, Bulgaria offers to host next meeting

epresentatives of more than 90 countries and of the Syrian opposition are to gather in Paris tomorrow July 6 for a meeting of the Friends of the Syrian People, a contact group with the United States, major European countries and many Arab League states as prominent members.

Russia and China will not be attending, in the way as they absented themselves from the group’s first meeting in Tunis in February and the second in Istanbul, Turkey, last April.

On July 2 and 3, representatives of 300 Syrian opposition groups met in Cairo, reiterating their call for an end to the violence in Syria and the departure from power of president Assad, but did not come up – as backers of the meeting had hoped – with a unified body to represent the Syrian opposition overall.

The Cairo meeting saw scuffles when a Kurdish delegation walked out, complaining that they were being marginalised.

In a statement ahead of the Paris meeting of the Friends of Syria on July 6, Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov said that discussions would be held with the representatives of the Syrian opposition on ways to end the violence which so far has resulted in more than 14 000 people being killed and hundreds of thousands being forced to flee or to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.