Lebanese Red Cross volunteers use a stretcher to move a Syrian, who was wounded in the nearby Syrian city of Qusayr, from an ambulance upon their arrival at a hospital yesterday in the city of Shtora in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley.


AFP/Istanbul

Syria’s main opposition coalition reiterated yesterday its refusal to participate in proposed international peace talks, saying recent developments in the civil war had “closed the doors” to any political initiative.
“What is happening in Syria today completely shuts the doors on any discussions about international conferences and political initiatives,” George Sabra, head of the opposition National Coalition, said at a press conference in Istanbul.
His comments referred to an initiative headed by Washington and Moscow to bring the Syrian regime and opposition groups to peace talks in Geneva.
“The war declared by the regime and its allies in the region has reached a level we cannot ignore,” Sabra said.
He has already said on May 30 that the opposition would not attend a peace conference while “Iran” and the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah were supporting Syrian regime forces on the ground.
“The lives of Syrians are much more important than any political solution of international conference,” he said at the time.
Sabra also accused “Hezbollah and its allies in Syria of destroying the political, social, cultural and humanitarian foundations in the region established thousands of years ago”.
He also accused Hezbollah, along with Iraq and Iran, both Shia-majority countries, of pushing towards a “sectarian conflict”.
But he said the opposition would refuse to be dragged in, saying that this would change “our lives in the region into hell”.
Assad’s regime is dominated by members of the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia Islam, while the rebels fighting it are mostly Sunni Muslims.
The opposition chief also warned that the Lebanese government would have to take responsibility for the “implications of the invasion” of Syria by Hezbollah, saying the rebellion had the right to defend the Syrian people.
At the same press conference, Coalition secretary general Mustafa Sabbagh repeated calls for countries backing the uprising to send rebels weapons to match the regime’s firepower.
Sabbagh claimed the opposition coalition had done its best to assuage its backers’ fears over supplying weapons, receiving “only promises in return, few of which have been honoured”.