The Tunisian Al-Irada political party, a major opposition grouping headed by former president Moncef Marzouki, expressed its outright rejection of inviting Bashar al-Assad to participate in the upcoming Arab summit to be held in Tunisia. He stressed that inviting Assad to the summit would be a betrayal of the Tunisian and Syrian peoples.
Al-Irada’s Secretary-general, Durra Ismail, said that she would not welcome the visit of the head of the Syrian regime to Tunisia. She stressed that Al-Irada party will not deal with “an autocratic regime that is killing its own people; committing violations against the innocent civilians; and committing crimes against civilians and opponents.”
Former minister and current MP, Emad Daimi, said: “Sorry Syria! We are not welcoming the one who is killing his own people.” He lashed out against the Tunisian political parties that changed their stance on Assad and their attempts to justify their new stances.
“Welcoming the Syrian dictator who is mass murdering his own people in Tunisia is a betrayal of the Tunisian revolution, its values and principles. It also represents a betrayal of the millions of Syrians who have been killed imprisoned, and displaced to refugee camps and across the world.”
The Syrian Coalition said it appreciated the “courageous stance of Al-Irada party as expressing “a strong belief in the Arab Spring” and reasserting “fidelity to the late Mohamed Bouazizi whose death sparked the Arab Spring.”
Al-Irada is the first Tunisian party to express rejection of Bashar al-Assad’s visit to Tunisia contrary to some parties that changed their stance on the Assad regime. Other Tunisian parties chose to remain silent after having previously supported Marzouki’s decision to expel the ambassador of the Assad regime from Tunisia and severe ties with the Assad regime in the early months of the Syrian revolution.
Vice-president of the Syrian Coalition, Dima Moussa, said that the restoration of ties with the Assad regime will only serve the Assad regime and its allies, especially Iran. She pointed out that the declining Arab support for the rights and legitimate demands of the Syrian people as well as the latest policies of some Arab countries have enabled Iran to further extend its influence in the region. These countries want to restore ties with the Assad regime under the pretext of confronting Iran’s growing influence, she added.
Moussa said that the reasons that prompted the Arab League to suspend the membership of the Assad regime and withdraw ambassadors from Damascus back in 2011 are still there, referring to the crimes that the Assad regime is committing in Syria on a daily basis. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department + The New Arab)
