Dubai: Syria's main opposition group elected a naturalised US citizen early on Tuesday as the first prime minister of its planned interim government, hoping to establish administrative authority in areas of northern Syria that have been secured by insurgents fighting President Bashar Al Assad.
After a prolonged day of manoeuvring and voting on Monday that lasted into the early-morning hours, representatives of the opposition coalition, meeting in Istanbul, chose Ghassan Hitto, 50, a former information technology executive, who emigrated from Syria many years ago and until recently had lived in Texas.
Hitto was heavily involved in volunteer efforts to help Syrians whose lives had been upended by the uprising against Al Assad.
In voting televised live by Al Jazeera, Hitto won 35 votes, three more than his closest competitor, Al Asaad Mustafa, a former Syrian agriculture minister.
Hitto is married to Suzanne Hitto, an American schoolteacher, and they have four children, who were all born in the United States. His eldest son, Obaida, has been working in Syria for the opposition and was injured there in a bombing, according to the opposition's press office. "A lot of the sons of this country had to leave for various reasons," Hitto said in a prerecorded video that was posted on. "But Syrian people must carry their homeland in their heart wherever they go."
He is expected to select other ministers in coming days for a government that is not yet physically in place in northern Syria. It was unclear whether all the rebel fighters united in their desire to oust Al Assad would recognize the interim government as a legitimate authority.
The announcement that Hitto had won came hours after Syrian warplanes attacked targets inside eastern Lebanon, the first time since the Syria conflict began that the military had used its air force to strike at suspected rebel hideouts across the Lebanon border.
The aerial assault was the third serious border episode tied to the Syria conflict in the past two weeks and underscored the threat to the country's neighbours.
The concept of a rival government run by the opposition inside Syrian territory has faced a mixed reaction in the United States, which has long demanded that Al Assad resign and that an independent transitional government acceptable to all sides replace him, as agreed to in a major conference on Syria in Geneva nine months ago.
"That's the road forward," Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Monday in Washington. "But you have to have a President who is willing to appoint that independent entity. And as of this moment, he is not."
While the United States is not yet willing to provide weapons to the insurgency, as France and Britain have said they are prepared to do, Kerry reiterated the Obama administration's position that "that the United States does not stand in the way of other countries that have made a decision to provide arms, whether it's France or Britain or others."
Earlier on Monday, Lebanon's National News Agency said in a brief dispatch that "warplanes affiliated with the Syrian Air Force" had attacked the Wadi Al Khayl Valley area, near the Lebanese border town of Arsal, without specifying whether they had caused casualties or damage.
The mountainous area is known for its porous border. It is considered a haven for Syrian insurgents, and the civilian population there largely opposes Al Assad. Syrian forces have occasionally fired across the Lebanon border in clashes with anti-Al Assad fighters, but had never before used warplanes to attack suspected rebel positions inside Lebanese territory.
There was no immediate explanation for the attack from the Syrian government. But it had warned on Thursday that its forces might fire into Lebanon because of what it called repeated incursions by terrorist gangs, the standard official Syrian terminology for the armed opposition to Al Assad.
Lebanon's government, mindful of the long history of entanglements with its neighbour, has sought to remain neutral over the conflict in Syria. But sectarian tensions have been stoked by the conflict nonetheless.
Syrian opposition leaders choose Hitto as provisional prime minister
Earlier report from Istanbul: Syrian opposition leaders chose Western-educated technocrat Ghassan Hitto as provisional prime minister in what they hope will be the first step to fill a power vacuum arising from a two-year-long revolt against President Bashar Al Assad.
At a meeting of the Syrian National Coalition in Istanbul that stretched well into the night, Hitto received 35 votes of around 50 cast by coalition members.
“I give great thanks to the heroes and revolutionaries of the Syrian people. We are with you,” Hitto told coalition members in brief remarks after he was named.
With large swathes of Syria falling to the opposition in the last few weeks while still being subjected to devastating artillery and aerial bombardment, as well as ballistic missile attacks, Hitto faces a daunting task in setting up an administration to compensate for the collapse of the central government.
Al Assad is using his government’s ability to still deliver some services, such as fuel and the Internet, to placate several regions that contain supply routes to his forces, according to opposition sources.
At least 70,000 people have been killed since a peaceful protest movement led by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority broke out two years ago against four decades of family rule by Al Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect, and his father, the late Hafez Al Assad.
The demonstrations were met by bullets, eventually sparking a Sunni backlash and a mostly Islamist armed insurgency increasingly spearheaded by the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, creating a political dilemma for regional and Western powers and deepening the Shi’ite-Sunni divide in the Middle East.
Fifty-year old Hitto, who has US citizenship and worked in the communications sector in the United States before working on securing humanitarian assistance for the uprising, is seen a centrist figure within the opposition.
He will have to secure funding of at least $500 million a month for an alternative administration to deliver services, reopen schools and pay public employees in regions where central authority had collapsed, a coalition official said.
“We now have a chance. At least a competent person has been chosen and he can start. If we had delayed naming a premier any longer it would have been too late,” the official said.
Hitto was elected with backing from the coalition’s secretary general Mustafa Sabbagh, a businessman with strong connections in the Gulf who has emerged as a kingmaker, along with the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, which heavily influences a large bloc in the coalition, according to coalition sources.
It remains unclear what type of relationship Hitto will have with coalition president Moaz al-Khatib, a moderate cleric from Damascus who has been playing the role of statesman and who has been lukewarm about forming a government.
Several senior coalition members, including tribal leader Ahmad Jarba and veteran opposition campaigners Walid al-Bunni and Kamal al-Labwani withdrew from the session before the vote to protest what they described as a hasty foreign-backed push to choose Hitto.
But Hitto’s supporters argued that their man was a qualified manager untainted by the coalition’s internal political struggles.
“A near consensus emerged on Hitto. He is a practical man with management experience and is open to debate. He promised to consult widely before naming ministers and only appoint those with a long experience,” said Mohammad Qaddah, the coalition’s representative from Deraa, cradle of the two-year uprising.
Louay Safi, another coalition member, said Hitto is expected to form a government that includes defence and foreign ministers as well as a main focus on service portfolios.
“Basically this government is going to provide services to liberated areas,” Safi said. Hitto has the technical abilities that you expect from the technocrat but he also has a sense of politics and is a very good negotiator. He would be a good representative to the international community.”
The Western-and Gulf-backed coalition was formed last year as an umbrella group of the opposition, but it has little control over the hundreds of rebel brigades fighting to depose four decades of Al Assad family rule.
Underpinning the difficulty of filling in the power vacuum, at least seven people in the northern city of Aleppo were killed in fighting on Sunday between gunmen employed by a self-appointed court run along Islamist lines and linked to Nusra and members of a rebel brigade, opposition activists in the city said.
The clashes occurred in the neighbourhood of Sakhour when the court gunmen tried to arrest members of the Shahba Shield brigade on suspicion of involvement in criminal activity, the sources said.
Selim Idris, head of opposition Supreme Military Council, said after briefing the coalition on the military situation, that Assad’s firepower makes it impossible for the rebel Free Syrian Army to guarantee the safety of the new government if it operates from inside Syria, but he said the opposition had to take the risks.
“Our people in liberated areas are languishing under destroyed infrastructure, without water, power and sanitation,” Idris said.
