KUWAIT CITY, Oct 3, (Agencies): Gulf civil societies on Monday called on the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to recognise the new Syrian opposition front as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
“We call on GCC states to recognise the Syrian National Council ... as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people and withdraw recognition from the Syrian regime,” said a statement by the Gulf Forum of Civil Societies.
“We call on Arab countries and international and humanitarian organisations to support the Syrian people against killings and oppression and provide protection,” said the statement signed by the group’s secretary general Anwar al-Rasheed.
The Forum, which groups several mostly liberal Gulf civil societies, strongly condemned the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and called for a joint action to force him to “bow to the people’s just demands.”
Syrian opposition groups on Sunday formed the Syrian National Council at a meeting in Istanbul with the aim of presenting a united front against the Assad regime, which is engaged in a bloody crackdown on protests in which more than 2,700 people have been killed.
A number of GCC states, led by Saudi Arabia, recalled their ambassadors from Damascus in August for “consultations” over the crackdown.
Meanwhile, the Syrian National Council, a newly launched anti-regime front, has gained mass support in Syria with many people demanding it be recognised as the country’s sole authority, activists said on Monday.
The popular support on Syria’s streets for the SNC, forged Sunday in Turkey, comes as US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta predicted it is “a matter of time” before President Bashar al-Assad’s regime is ousted by a popular uprising.
“Demonstrations of support” for the SNC were held late on Sunday in main protest hubs including Hama, Homs, Idlib, Daraa, Deir Ezzor and the province of Damascus, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Protests were also held in the capital’s Al-Qadam neighbourhood despite a heavy security presence, the rights watchdog said.
“The Syrian National Council reunites the forces of the opposition and the peaceful revolution,” Paris-based academic Burhan Ghalioun told reporters at Sunday’s launch in Istanbul.
Uniting groups across the political spectrum, “it represents the Syrian revolution both inside and outside the country,” he said.
“It works to mobilise all categories of people in Syria and give the necessary support for the revolution to progress and realise the aspirations of our people for the overthrow of the regime, its symbols and its head,” he said.
Videos posted on Facebook page “Syrian Revolution 2011,” one of the motors of the protest movement against Assad, showed demonstrators at Zabadani, 50 kms (30 miles) northwest of Damascus, chanting their support for the new group: “Syrian National Council, our sole and legitimate representative.”
They also demanded that Assad step down.
In Daraa, the southern flashpoint province where the revolt against Assad’s regime began in March, protesters carried banners reading: “We support the Syrian National Council, the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian revolution.”
Syrian independent lawmaker Mohammed Habash told AFP he supported “in principle any gathering of the Syrian opposition” and called on the SNC to present “logical and plausible proposals to save the country and to end the bloodletting.”
“We are opposed to any foreign intervention because the solution should come from within the country,” added Habash, who formed a party called “The Third Way” in a bid to find a solution to the political crisis shaking Syria.
Since mid-March, the country has been rocked by an unprecedented pro-democracy protest movement that the Assad regime has sought to crush using deadly force.
More than 2,700 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
Panetta, speaking in Tel Aviv after meeting his Israeli counterpart, said Assad’s days were numbered.
Washington and other foreign capitals, he said, had “made clear Assad should step down.”
“While he continues to resist, I think it’s very clear that it’s a matter of time before that (exit) in fact happens. When it does, we don’t know,” he said.
The Pentagon chief, in a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Monday, said Assad’s regime had lost all credibility through its brutal crackdown on dissent.
Syrian troops going house to house have detained more than 3,000 people in the past three days in the rebellious town of Rastan, which saw some of the worst fighting of the 6-month-old uprising recently, activists said Monday.
Over the past week, the military fought hundreds of army defectors who sided with anti-regime protesters in Rastan. The fighting demonstrated the increasingly militarized nature of the uprising and heightened fears that Syria may be sliding toward civil war.
The activist group Local Coordination Committees said fighting in the town has now stopped after the military operation that left dozens dead. The group and a Rastan-based activist confirmed about 3,000 in the town of 70,000 had been detained. The activist told The Associated Press by telephone that the detainees are being held at a cement factory, as well as some schools and the Sports Club, a massive, four-story compound.
“Ten of my relatives have been detained,” said the activist, who asked that he be identified only by his first name Hassan for fear of retaliation. He said he was speaking from hiding in Rastan.
Syria’s opposition movement has until now focused on peaceful demonstrations, although recently there have been reports of protesters taking up arms to defend themselves against military attacks. Army defectors have also been fighting government troops, particularly in Rastan, the town just north of Homs that government forces retook on Saturday.
The fears of civil war, possibly along sectarian lines, were also heightened by the assassination Sunday of the 21-year-old son of Syria’s top Sunni Muslim cleric — the latest in a string of targeted killings.
The state-appointed cleric is considered a loyal supporter of President Bashar Assad’s regime, heading a host of regime-backed Sunni clergymen who have been a base of support for the president’s ruling Alawite sect.
Hassoun, who has echoed regime claims that the unrest in Syria is the result of a foreign conspiracy, accused the opposition of creating the climate for his son’s killing and blamed rival, anti-Assad Sunni clerics for allegedly issuing fatwas (religious edicts) inciting against him.
Sanctions
In Washington, the US Treasury Department on Monday moved to block the sale of telecommunications equipment to Syria, the latest in a series of sanctions aimed at isolating Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
According to a Treasury document signed on Monday, US firms will now be barred from selling the Syrian government, or anyone in the country, telecoms equipment or technology, “including satellite or terrestrial network connectivity.”
Washington has slapped sanctions on a series of top Syrian government officials amid a deadly crackdown on protestors across the country.
On Aug 17 President Barack Obama signed an executive order authorizing sanctions against the Syrian regime because of what the White House termed a “continuing escalation of violence against the people of Syria.”
The sanctions froze all Syrian government property in the United States and banned US citizens from doing new business with the country, or importing petroleum products.
Speaking in Tel Aviv on Monday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it was “a matter of time” before the Syrian regime headed al-Assad is ousted from power by the uprising.
According to the United Nations, the crackdown has killed at least 2,700 people.
Throughout the crackdown, Syrian state-backed television channels have broadcast pro-government accounts of events in the country.
Syrian news networks have also been used to broadcast messages from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and the remnants of his regime.
The order was signed by Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Bahrain
A Bahraini special court on Monday jailed 36 Shiites for up to 25 years each in three separate cases linked to pro-reform protests in the Gulf kingdom, a military prosecutor said.
The rulings came only hours after a civil court date was set for a group of medics who were handed lengthy jail terms last week for their roles in the month-long protests, leading to international condemnation of Bahrain.
In Monday’s decision, 14 Shiites were sentenced to life, or 25 years in prison, after being convicted of beating to death a Pakistani with a “terrorist” intent and gathering for riots, the prosecutor Yusof Fleifel said.
Fifteen were sentenced to 15 years in jail for attempting to murder military personnel and taking part in protests and vandalism at Manama’s Bahrain University, Fleifel said, quoted by BNA state news agency.
The third case involved seven students, six of them jailed 15 years, while another was sentenced to 18 years, over charges including the attempted murder of several people at the university.
The students had been charged with “holding people hostage in building S20 and setting it on fire with the aim of killing those in the upper floor” in addition to damaging the building and stealing computers, BNA said.
The students were collectively fined 349,300 Bahraini dinars ($926,377), it added.
Matar Matar, a former opposition MP, said those convicted of killing of the Pakistani had confessed under torture and that the evidence against them was weak.
“Their lawyers had asked for a medical committee to check them for marks of torture, but their request was turned down,” Matar told AFP, adding the defendants had said they only took part in a public gathering.
“The only evidence used against them is through witnesses. There are no fingerprints or any other proof... Their confessions were taken under duress,” he added.
The three groups were sentenced by the National Safety Court, a special security court set up following a mid-March clampdown on the Shiite-led protests.
King Hamad had declared a State of National Safety, a quasi-emergency law, a day before forces drove protesters out of Manama’s Pearl Square, the focal point of demonstrations, and cracked down on Shiite activists across the country.
The defendants were able to appeal their sentences before civil courts, BNA said, citing Fleifel.
The National Safety Court has a mixed military and civil panel. But last month the king promised that all Bahrainis in trials related to the protests would see their verdicts issued by a civil court.
Scores of opposition activists and protesters, predominantly Shiites, have been handed sentences criticised as harsh in the West, including several death sentences.
Meanwhile, the group of Shiite medics who were handed lengthy jail terms by the same court last week will get to appeal their sentence in a civil court later this month, the prosecutor general said.
“A session has been set for Oct 23 to look into the appeals,” chief prosecutor Abdulrahman al-Sayyed said in a statement carried overnight by BNA.
Twenty medics had on Thursday been sentenced to jail terms of between five to 15 years.
The medical staff all worked at Manama’s Salmaniya Hospital, which was stormed by security forces in mid-March as they drove protesters out of Pearl Square, the focal point of demonstrations.
Meanwhile, human rights activists said Monday that a group of 14 prominent Bahraini activists and opposition figures who launched a hunger strike on Sept 24 were being denied medical care while in prison.
Mohammad al-Maskati, head of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said the health of at least two of the jailed activists on hunger strike had deteriorated.
“Abduljalil al-Singace and Abdulwahab Hussein Ali both have pre-existing medical conditions, including diabetes, and their health has deteriorated significantly,” Maskati told AFP.
Authorities in the kingdom ruled by the Sunni Al-Khalifa dynasty have said that 24 people were killed when the Shiite-led protests were put down, including four policemen. The opposition puts the death toll at 30.