Qatar pushes to give Syria’s seat on Arab League to rebels

Qatar will press ahead with plans to give the anti-Assad opposition the seat on the Arab League council held by the Syrian government despite the crisis over the sudden resignation of Moaz al-Khatib, leader of the Syrian national coalition.

The move, which would cement the isolation of Syria in much of the Arab world, drew a furious response from Damascus, which accused the Cairo-based body of handing the seat to "bandits and thugs".

It came as the centre of the capital was hit by rocket fire from rebel positions on the outskirts, indicating that the battle for Syria, now into its third year, was edging closer to Bashar al-Assad's power base.

In the north of the country, meanwhile, a bomb attack seriously badly wounded the former public face of the armed opposition, Colonel Riad al-Assad, whose car was hit in the city of Deir Ezzor. Activists blamed regime forces for the attack on the colonel, who is being treated in Turkey.

Khatib, in recent months the lynchpin of both Arab and western hopes for the opposition, was due in Doha on Monday for emergency talks with colleagues after announcing his decision to quit at the weekend.

Khatib's pledge to address the Arab League summit, which opens on Tuesday, has injected rare and unanticipated drama into the proceedings and turned the spotlight on the role of Qatar, which has been instrumental in backing anti-Assad forces since the Syrian uprising began two years ago.

Qatar became the first Arab country to close its embassy in Damascus, though others followed suit later. But it has been criticised for delivering weapons that have ended up in the hands of jihadist rebel groups as well as giving strong support to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera, the Qatari-based satellite TV channel, is widely disliked by other governments.

Syria was suspended by the Arab League in November 2011. Three of its 22 member states – Algeria, Iraq and Lebanon – are known to oppose going any further in recognising the opposition.

But diplomats made it clear that the move was now unstoppable – triggering a denunciation in the state-run daily, al-Thawra. "They have forgotten that it is the people who grant the powers and not the emirs of obscurantism and sand," the paper said, referring to Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

Khatib, a former imam of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, is known to have been unhappy with Qatari support for the choice of Ghassan Hitto, a Texan-based IT executive, as the prime minister of a transitional Syrian government.

Hitto, an unknown in opposition ranks until recent months, is believed to have been backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which is taking an increasingly prominent stake among the political blocs and rebel factions battling the regime. He has recently travelled to areas under rebel control in Aleppo and Idlib in an effort to establish his credentials on the ground.

Khatib is popular inside Syria, though he was fiercely criticised when he signalled a readiness to negotiate with the Assad regime, clarifying later that he would negotiate only over the terms of its departure.

The coalition said its members had rejected Khatib's resignation and had asked him to continue in a "management" capacity, leaving his position unclear.

Opposition sources said that Khatib was angry at the flow of weapons to extremist groups compared with the few getting through to the Free Syrian Army, in part because of disagreements between Britain and France, which have both signalled that they would like to lift the EU arms embargo, and other member states.

The arms flow to rebels has stepped up this year, partly due to Saudi Arabia resuming a role as a key supplier of medium-sized weapons, many of which have been sent through Jordan since early January. However, groups on the frontline in Aleppo continue to complain bitterly that they do not have enough firepower to finish what they started when they stormed the city last August.

FSA-aligned groups fighting in the eastern cities of Raqaa and Deir Ezzor say they have few of the heavy weapons being used by jihadist groups, such as Jabhat al-Nusra.

Units from the FSA fought a three-day battle with al-Nusra fighters in Deir Ezzor earlier this month before agreeing a truce. Col Assad's car is believed to have been hit as it moved through Deir Ezzor by either a roadside bomb or a rocket-propelled grenade.

While opposition groups control much of Deir Ezzor, backers of the regime remain and a large, well-armed military force still holds about a third of the city.

In a sign of worsening security fears in the capital, the United Nations said it would withdraw 50 of its remaining 100 staff. Jordan, meanwhile, closed its main border crossing with Syria after two days of battles between rebel groups and loyalist forces – the first time it has done so since the crisis began in early March 2011.