Syria crisis: Friends of Syria agree funding for rebels

Syria crisis: Friends of Syria agree funding for rebels - live updates:

• 'Pot of gold' for Syrian defectors agreed in Istanbul
• Assad regime continues to shell Homs
• Muslim Brotherhood to field presidential candidate in Egypt
11.00am: Russia has criticised yesterday's decisions by Friends of Syria to fund the Free Syrian Army as contradictory to peace, AFP reports.
It quotes a foreign ministry spokesman as saying:

The promises and intentions to deliver direct military and logistical support to the armed... opposition that were voiced in Istanbul unquestionably contradict the goals of a peaceful settlement to the civil conflict in Syria.

A Syrian government newspaper described the meeting as a "failure", according to Now Lebanon.

"Despite all the hype, the conference of the 'Enemies of Syria' produced only meager results... showing it was unable to shake Syrians' rejection of foreign intervention," said Al-Baath newspaper, mouthpiece of Assad's ruling party by the same name.

10.07am: Many in Egypt have been taken by surprise by the Muslim Brotherhood's decision to put forward Khairat al-Shater as a presidential candidate, including members of his own family according to Egyptian Chronicles.
Writing on Facebook, his daughter Sara said: "I am shocked from the candidacy of my father after knowing the news like the rest of Egyptians. God help us "
On Twitter his son Hassan wrote: "Unfortunately dad is running for presidency!"
Zeinobia, the author of Egyptian Chronicles, says Shater's failing health raise questions about his candidacy.
9.23am: A Bahraini activist and Palestinian journalists have been denied entry into Egypt.
Maryam Alkhawaja, spokeswoman for the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, and Majed Abusalama, a Gaza based journalist both tweeted their ordeal.

Iam deported now by the Egyptian police to Gaza. That is rude. #Egypt I want to stay. (cont) tl.gd/gosoel
— Majed Abusalama (@Majed_Abusalama) April 2, 2012

I'm being deported from #Egypt. Passport guy looked at me n told me "enti bta3 elsowra elba7raineya" as if he'd made the greatest discovery
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) April 2, 2012

I arrived in #Egypt at 2:45 am, it is now 7:09 and they still won't tell me why I've been stopped. Guy in charge kept repeating "u know why"
— Maryam Alkhawaja (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA) April 2, 2012

9.17am: Khaled Abo Salah, an opposition spokesman in Homs, has urged the international community to do more to support armed resistance to the Assad regime.
Salah, who has appeared in a number of opposition videos from the city, said statements of condemnation against the regime were not enough.
In a video, purported to have been filmed in Homs, he made a list of three demands:
1) Stop all forms of political and diplomatic deals with the Assad regime
2) Impose an arms blockade against the regime and supply arms for the Free Syrian Army rebels
3) Impose buffer zones and humanitarian corridors, with air cover, near the Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese borders
8.53am: More than two dozen people have been killed in renewed army shelling of the Syrian city of Homs, according to World News Australia.

Activists said heavy machine gun fire and artillery pounded the districts of Khaldiyeh, Bayada and Safsafa in the battered city on Sunday, despite world demands on the Syrian regime to end violence that has killed thousands of people in the past year.

Subtitled footage claimed to show smoke rising from the old city after the shelling.
8.29am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live. The Friends of Syria coalition have agreed to fund, but not arm, the Free Syrian Army, as Kofi Annan is due to update the United Nations security council on his six-point plan for ending the violence.
Here's a round up of the latest developments:

Syria

• The Friends of Syria group has agreed to channel Gulf cash to the opposition Syrian National Council to pay the fighters of the Free Syrian Army. Payments would also be made to those who dared to defect from the Assad regime, whose senior ranks have so far remained solid. But the meeting stopped short of agreeing to arm the opposition.The Foreign office has published a full text of the conclusions of the Istanbul meeting.
• The offer has drawn the United States and dozens of other countries closer to direct intervention in the fighting in Syria, according the New York Times. The agreement edges the Friends of Syria closer to a 'proxy war against Assad's government and its international supporters, principally Iran and Russia", it said.

The assistance to the rebel fighters as Assad's loyalists press on with a brutal crackdown could worsen a conflict that has already led to at least 9,000 deaths and is increasingly showing signs of descending into a sectarian civil war. Some say that enabling the uprising to succeed is now the best bet to end the instability and carnage sooner.

• US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has accused Bashar al-Assad of playing for time by accepting but not implementing Annan's six-point plan to ending the violence in Syria.
Speaking after the meeting in Istanbul, she said:

If Assad continues, as he has, to fail to end the violence, to institute a ceasefire, to withdraw his troops from the areas that he has been battering, to begin a political transition, to allow humanitarian aid in at least for two hours a day, then it's unlikely he is going to ever agree, because it is a clear signal that he wants to wait to see whether he has totally suppressed the opposition. I think he would be mistaken to believe that. My reading is that the opposition is gaining intensity, not losing it.

• The Friends of Syria statement is a tawdry model of diplomatic waffling, according to former US diplomat Daniel Serwer. He writes:

Of course the main question now is how to begin a transition when Bashar al Assad is still holding on to power, with pretty solid support from the Syrian army and security services as well as the country's diplomats. Sadly, the Friends of Syria offer nary a hint, apart from urging no arms sales and tightening of sanctions. Humanitarian assistance, which the Friends emphasize, is not going to be sufficient to initiate the political dialogue that Kofi Annan's plan calls for.

• Concerns are growing for Homs citizen journalist Ali Mahmoud Othman following reports of his arrest and possible torture, the New York Times reports. William Hague, said hew he was "very concerned" about Othman's treatment Othman. US senator John McCain said the reports were "credible and troubling".
• Syrian rebels in Turkey are playing a waiting game as the establish supply lines to opponents of the Assad regime, writes Constanze Letsch in Antakya. Abdurrahman Kalash, a self-described Salafist imam, told her:

We want to go back and join the struggle again. It might look like a dead end, but we are simply biding our time. The Syrian army has erected many more checkpoints than before, and many [opposition] fighters are currently in Turkey, waiting until we have more weapons. We also know that there are many more Syrian soldiers who would like to defect, but we tell them to wait a bit longer.

• Syria's foreign ministry has claimed the year-old revolt to topple President Bashar al-Assad is over amid reports that the army is continuing to shell opposition areas. "The battle to topple the state is over," ministry spokesman Jihad al-Makdissi told government channel Syria TV. "Our goal now is to ensure stability and create a perspective for reform and development in Syria while preventing others from sabotaging the path of reform."

Egypt

• The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has announced it will field a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, despite a pledge not to take part in the contest. A breakdown in relations with Scaf, the military junta that rules Egypt, and the emergence of strong Islamist candidates are believed to be behind Saturday's announcement that the group's second in command, Khairat al-Shater, would stand for election.
• Shater's decision is a surprising gamble that could backfire, writes Marc Lynch in Foreign Policy magazine.

Shater is not a charismatic front-man likely to enthrall the mass Egyptian public on television or in public speeches. He might find it tough going to unite an Islamist Presidential field already divided, at least for now, between Abou el-Fotouh, the surprisingly omnipresent Hazem Salah Abou Ismail, and Mohammed Salim al-Awwa. In contrast to the Parliamentary elections, Muslim Brotherhood members alone would not likely be enough to carry the day in a high-turnout Presidential election - and Shater has not proven an ability to appeal beyond the organization he dominates. Finally, his presence in the race could well galvanize the non-Islamist vote to rally behind a consensus candidate such as Amr Moussa.

Libya

• Tribal leaders and local officials are poised to sign an agreement to end fighting in Sebha which killed 147 people last week, the Libya Herald reports. Under the deal Tebu forces are to withdraw from all areas and recognise the authority of the national army which will be in charge of all security operations in the south and on the border, it says.

Iraq

• Tariq al-Hashemi, the fugitive Iraqi vice-president, travelled to Qatar on Sunday on what the Gulf nation's state news agency called an official visit. The visit marks Hashemi's first foreign trip since he fled to Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region to avoid an arrest warrant issued in December, and could stoke tensions between Baghdad's Shia-led government and Sunni monarchies of the Gulf.