Munzer Akbik, President Jarba spokesman, denied that the Free Syrian Army has been detaining civilians, stressing that the “Assad regime is the only side that has been detaining children, women and patients, who we consider as one of the most important priorities at the top of the agenda of the negotiations.” Akbik also said the Coalition delegation submitted a list of tens of thousands of names of Syrian civilians detained by the regime. Those who were detained by the Free Syrian Army are prisoners of war, not civilians,” he stressed. Akbik blamed the Assad regime for blocking the entry of humanitarian aid to the besieged areas. Haitham Maleh, head of the of the legal committee said that the Assad regime prevented humanitarian aid convoys from entering Homs despite though they agreed on this yesterday. Maleh accused the Assad regime of “wriggling out of its obligations to the international community by refusing to sign the terms of the Geneva I.” Moreover, Maleh stresses that the Assad regime “is rejecting taking any confidence-building measures such as the release of detainees or allowing the delivery of humanitarian aid for the besieged areas.” Akbik also said earlier that “we will not allow the regime delegation to dwarf the demands of the Syrian people or limiting them to humanitarian issues, but we will hammer home these demands till the regime delegation agrees to the transfer of power.” He also added that “we cannot separate these two issues from each other as the humanitarian tragedy is closely related to Assad holding to power.” He also said that the regime delectation is reluctant to sign the terms of Geneva I because their participation in the conference came after pressure from the international community to attend the conference.” Akbik also denied the existence of any relationship between the Coalition and al-Qaida, stressing that “we are fighting extremist organizations that the Assad regime inserted into the body of the revolution. Everyone must be aware that we do not represent the terrorists in the negotiations, but rather we represent the will of the Syrian people. Akbik’s remarks comes in response to statements by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov when he said that “a dialogue cannot be made with the terrorists in Syria. There will not be any negotiations with ISIS or any other extremist organizations.” In a similar vein, Haitham al-Maleh had earlier called on the Russian government to respect the international law and stop supporting terrorism in Syria in order to achieve its economic and political interests. “Everyone knows that extremist groups, that include many Russian and Iranian elements, have been working for the Assad regime to distort the real image of the Syrian revolution,” he said. Maleh added that Assad must be brought to justice not only for killing the Syrian people, but also for creating many extremist cells in the region in order to affect the opinion of the Western countries, so that they have two options, either terrorism or Assad. Furthermore, Maleh points out that overthrowing Assad means getting rid of ISIS as it was created by the regime. We must not forget that there is an organic relationship between the Assad regime and al-Qaeda. Assad supervised the transfer of al-Qaeda members from Iraq to the Nahr al-Bared in Lebanon in order to achievie certain political goals at the expense of the blood of civilians.” (Source: Syrian Coalition)
