ROME, Feb 28, (Agencies): The United States said on Thursday it will for the first time give non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels and more than double its aid to Syria’s civilian opposition, disappointing opponents of President Bashar al-Assad clamouring for Western weapons.

The United States cast the aid as a way to bolster the rebels’ popular support. It will include medical supplies, food for rebel fighters and $60 million to help the civil opposition provide basic services like security, education and sanitation.

US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the new steps after a meeting of 11 mostly European and Arab nations within the “Friends of Syria” group.

The aid did not appear to entirely satisfy the Syrian National Council opposition, a fractious Cairo-based group that has struggled to gain traction inside Syria, especially among disparate rebel forces.

“Many sides ... focus (more) on the length of the rebel fighter’s beard than they do on the blood of the children being killed,” Syrian National Coalition President Moaz Alkhatib said at an appearance with Kerry and Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi.

In what analysts described as a sign of disappointment, Syria’s political opposition has postponed talks to choose the leader of a provisional government, two opposition sources told Reuters in Beirut.

Opposition leaders hoped a Saturday meeting in Istanbul would elect a prime minister to operate in rebel-controlled areas of Syria, threatened by a slide into chaos as the conflict between Assad’s forces and insurgents nears its second anniversary.

While one source said the meeting might happen later in the week, a second source said it had been put off because the three most likely candidates for prime minister had reservations about taking the role without more concrete international support.

“The opposition has been increasingly signalling that it is tired of waiting and no one serious will agree to be head of a government without real political and logistical support,” said Syrian political commentator Hassan Bali, who lives in Germany.

Bali said the United States and other members of the core “Friends of Syria” nations appeared intent “on raising the ante against Assad but are not sure how.”

A final communique said participants would “coordinate their efforts closely so as to best empower the Syrian people and support the Supreme Military Command of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army in its efforts to help them exercise self-defence”.

More than 70,000 Syrians have been killed in a fierce conflict that began with peaceful anti-Assad protests nearly two years ago. Some 860,000 have fled abroad and several million are displaced within the country or need humanitarian assistance.

The United States has given $385 million in humanitarian aid but US President Barack Obama has so far refused to give arms, arguing it is difficult to prevent them from falling into the hands of militants who could use them on Western targets.

On Thursday, however, Kerry said the United States would for the first time provide assistance — in the form of medical supplies and the standard US military ration known as Meals Ready to Eat, or MREs — to the fighters.

A US official told reporters it would give the aid only to carefully vetted fighters, adding the United States was worried that “extremists” opposed to democracy, human rights and tolerance were gaining ground in the country.

“Those members of the opposition who support our shared values ... need to set an example of a Syria where daily life is governed neither by the brutality of the Assad regime nor by the agenda of al Qaeda affiliated extremists,” the official said.

If sending non-lethal assistance goes smoothly, it could conceivably offer a model for providing weaponry should Obama ultimately decide to do so.

The continued US refusal to send weapons may compound the frustration that prompted the coalition to say last week it would shun the Rome talks. It attended only under US pressure.

Many in the coalition say Western reluctance to arm rebels only plays into the hands of Islamist militants now widely seen as the most effective forces in the struggle to topple Assad.

However, a European diplomat held out the possibility of Western military support, saying the coalition and its Western and Arab backers would meet in Istanbul next week to discuss military and humanitarian support to the insurgents.

With fighting raging on largely sectarian lines, French President Francois Hollande said at a Moscow summit that new partners were needed to broker talks on ending the crisis, winning guarded support from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We think that this dialogue must find a new form so that it speaks to all parties,” said Hollande, giving few details of his proposal.

Putin said Russia — one of Assad’s staunchest allies — would look at Hollande’s proposal, “which I think we could consider with all our partners and try to carry out.”

Meanwhile, Syrian rebels clashed with regime troops in the narrow stone alleyways around a historic 12th century mosque inside the walled Old City of Aleppo on Thursday, while a government airstrike in the countryside north of the city killed at least seven people, activists said.

The rebels, who have been slowly chipping away at the regime’s hold on Aleppo, received a boost Wednesday from the US in their fight to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. Washington pledged an additional $60 million in assistance to the opposition and — in a significant policy shift — for the first time will provide nonlethal aid like food and medical supplies directly to rebel forces on the ground.
US Secretary of State John Kerry announced the decision on the sidelines of an international conference on Syria in Rome, where European nations were also expected to signal their intention to provide fresh assistance to the opposition, possibly including defensive military hardware.

The rebels have made a number of strategic gains in northern Syria in recent weeks, including the capture of a hydroelectric dam and some military bases. They also have been regularly hitting the heart of Damascus with mortar rounds, puncturing the aura of normalcy that the regime has tried to cultivate in the capital.

In Aleppo, a key battleground in the civil war, clashes raged around the landmark Umayyad Mosque in the walled Old City, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The rebels control one part of the mosque, and government troops hold the other.

Rebels launched an offensive on Aleppo, Syria’s largest urban center and its commercial capital, in July 2012. Since then, the city has been carved into rebel- and government-controlled zones in brutal street fighting that has destroyed entire neighborhoods and damaged some of the ancient city’s rich archaeological and cultural heritage.

The Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Aleppo, sits near a medieval covered market in the Old City, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The mosque was heavily damaged in October 2012 just weeks after a fire gutted the old city’s famed market.

North of Aleppo, a government airstrike on the village of Deir Jamal killed at least seven people, including five children, according to the Observatory. It was not immediately clear what the target was, but regime warplanes frequently carry out bombing runs on rebel-held towns.

Farther south in the central city of Homs, the state news agency said a car bomb caused casualties and extensive material damage, but it did not elaborate.

An official in the Homs governor’s office told The Associated Press that there were two blasts and that four people were killed and at least six wounded. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

With the bloodshed showing no sign of abating, the Syrian opposition has grown increasingly frustrated with what it sees as the international community’s apathy toward the suffering on the ground and its unwillingness to provide rebels with the arms they need to counter the regime’s superior firepower.
The US and its European allies have been reluctant to arm the opposition fighters the ground for fear the weapons could end up in the hands of Islamic militants, who might then carry out attacks on Western or Israeli targets.

So far, the US has largely limited its assistance to the Syrian opposition to funding for communications and other logistical equipment.

The US decision to provide more aid directly to the rebels is designed to increase the pressure on Assad to step down and pave the way for a democratic transition. The aid is also intended to help the opposition Syrian National Coalition govern newly liberated areas of Syria and blunt the influence of extremists.

“For more than a year, the United States and our partners have called on Assad to heed the voice of the Syrian people and to halt his war machine,” Kerry said in Rome. “Instead, what we have seen is his brutality increase.”

The Coalition, which has been hampered by the same infighting that has dogged the opposition since the uprising began, has struggled to agree on the leadership of a transitional administration since the opposition umbrella group was formed late last year. The group has met on previous occasions to select an interim prime minister, but has failed to reach a compromise.