tarnish barrera: Rebels: Syrian vice president defects

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: Activist says a defection would indicate that the "regime is collapsing very quickly"
Rebels have been trying to get Farouq al-Sharaa into Jordan, a spokesman says
Analyst says the sectarian nature of the conflict could have spurred a defection
Al-Sharaa served under both Hafez and Bashar al-Assad

(CNN) -- Conflicting reports emerged Saturday about whether Syria's vice president has defected.

A spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army said Saturday that Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa has fled the regime.

Syrian state-run TV did not explicitly say whether al-Sharaa had defected, but it reported that the vice president's office issued a statement saying al-Sharaa "has never at any moment thought of leaving the homeland to whatever direction."

If al-Sharaa did defect, it would mark the highest-level departure from President Bashar al-Assad's regime yet.

Rebel fighters sit behind a barricade of rocks on an Aleppo street. A mortar shell falls toward the Syrian village of Jbatha Al-khashab, about 45 kilometers (28 miles) south of Damascus. It's seen from the Israeli side of the border, in the Golan Heights. A Free Syrian Army soldier rips a portrait of President Bashar al-Assad at the Bab Al-Salam border crossing to Turkey on Sunday. Dozens of Turkish truck drivers on Saturday, July 21, accused Free Syrian Army rebels of having burned and looted their lorries as they captured Syria's Bab al-Hawa post, near Aleppo, from government troops.

Showdown in Syria

HIDE CAPTION

The news comes amid a stream of resignations by Syrian officials in recent weeks, including Republican Guard Brig. Gen. Manaf Tlas and Prime Minister Riyad Hijab. Like al-Sharaa, the men are Sunnis who held top posts in a government dominated by the country's Alawite minority.

"His defection, if confirmed, is significant in that it represents yet another high-level official (in fact, the highest civilian official) who sees that the aAssad regime is a sinking ship. I think this indicates that the regime is collapsing very quickly. I expect to see additional defections in both the military and civilian sectors in the coming days," said Rafif Jouejati, English language spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, the opposition network.

Observers view al-Sharaa's power and influence as more significant than the prime minister, who only served in the post for weeks. That's because he has long been a prominent and loyal member of the regime's old guard and had more political clout.

He served as foreign minister under al-Assad and his late father, Hafez, for more than 20 years and had been the vice president since 2006.

During Arab League meetings, al-Sharaa had been mentioned in recent months as a possible successor to the president under a transition plan that would be similar to the one in Yemen, where the president left office and the vice president took over.

Recently, State TV showed him attending the funerals of the high-level government officials who were killed in the July blast in Damascus. Al-Sharaa headed meetings with the former U.N. and Arab League point man on Syria, Kofi Annan, and international officials visiting Syria during the latest crisis.

"Farouq al-Sharaa did defect, but we were trying to get him through to Jordan," FSA spokesman Louai Miqdad told CNN Saturday.

He said al-Sharaa left Damascus more than a week ago and fled to Daraa to try to secure the safety of relatives, close proteges and other officials working with him. Al-Sharaa is from Daraa province, the area bordering Jordan where the regime's violent crackdown against protesters began in March 2011.

The rebel spokesman said he thinks the Syrian regime intensified attacks in Daraa province recently in an attempt to assassinate al-Sharaa before he left the country.

"We lost communications with our commanders in Daraa who were trying to get him to cross the borders to Jordan. We are extremely worried that the regime managed to detain some of his family members forcing al-Sharaa to surrender," Miqdad said. "We are trying to get him to a safe house with his family, and we will issue a press release once we get hold of our commanders on the ground who are handling this operation."

By Saturday morning, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency had removed al-Sharaa's profile from its website. SANA said a press release from al-Sharaa's office said that since the crisis began, he has been working "with different parties to end the bloodshed."

He had been operating "with the view of launching a political process in the framework of a comprehensive dialogue to achieve a national reconciliation that maintains the country's territorial integrity, regional safety and national independence far from any foreign military intervention," SANA said, citing the news release.

The release stressed al-Sharaa's welcome of the appointment of Lakhdar Brahimi as the U.N. new envoy to Syria and support for his "commitment to obtaining a unified stance by the Security Council to carry out his difficult mission without obstacles."

Andrew Tabler, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there had been talk that al-Sharaa's defection was in the works. He says he is not surprised by the possible departure.

"A lot of similar Sunnis are doing this," he said, citing Tlas and Hijab.

Al-Sharaa has been "part of the Sunni veneer that al-Assad built around the regime."

"Traditionally, he was a very stern person, very straightforward," Tabler said.

Tabler said he believes that al-Sharaa could have defected "probably because the battle now has become so sectarian," with an opposition dominated by Sunnis and pro-regime Alawites squaring off.

Tabler said the opposition hadn't liked al-Sharaa because he played a very large role in the government. As talk emerged of al-Sharaa as a transition figure as an Arab League plan came forward, the vice president began to be seen as an alternative.

Jouejati notes that it has been widely reported that al-Sharaa lost relatives in Daraa during the uprising and has been "under near-constant surveillance."

"These may be factors in his favor in the post-Assad phase," she said. "Mr. al-Sharaa may very well present himself as a candidate to lead the transition in Syria, but he would have to be accepted by the Syrian people. He has thus far represented a brutal dictatorship and his defection at this late stage in the revolution may be too little too late. "

The fighting continued Saturday, opposition activists said.

Warplanes attacked the western city of Houla and regime tanks shelled parts of the Damascus area.

Bodies were found in the heavily shelled Damascus suburb of Al Tal, the LCC said. At least 34 people were killed across the country Saturday, the opposition network said.

SANA reported widespread Syrian military strides against "terrorists" on Friday in Aleppo, where rebel groups and the armed forces have been slugging it out.

The outlet reported the deaths and woundings of dozens of people, arrests and the dismantling of explosives in and around the city, the most populous in the country. Regime forces foiled "two terrorist groups" trying to infiltrate the country from Lebanon and said many of them have been killed during clashes.

CNN's Holly Yan, Chelsea Carter and Nic Robertson contributed to this report.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_topstories/~3/n2PEbeFH8a0/index.html

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tarnish barrera

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Rebels: Syrian vice president defects

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