Qatari Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said on Monday that his country has no intention to normalize ties with the Syrian regime, accusing it of committing “war crimes” against its people.
“Normalization of ties with the Syrian regime at this point would mean normalization of ties with a red-handed person in war crimes, a fact that is not acceptable,” Al Thani said at a press conference in the capital Doha.
The Qatari minister also said that the Assad regime should not return to the Arab League.
Thani said the reasons why Assad was excluded from the international community are still in place. “We have not seen any positive signs that would warrant diplomatic normalization,” he added. “The Syrian people remain subject to aggression and displacement at the hands of the Assad regime,” Al Thani said.
Thani’s remarks come after the United Arab Emirates announced late last month it was reopening its embassy in Damascus after seven-year closure. Syria’s seat in the Arab League has been suspended a few months into the start of the Syrian Revolution in 2011.
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.
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.” (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
