Syrian opposition rejects amnesty offer

Syrian president Bashar Assad issued a general amnesty for prisoners that includes those deemed to have committed political “crimes” as pressure built from a 10-week-old uprising that his regime has failed to quell with overwhelming military force.

The offer was swiftly rejected by the opposition as just another plot by the regime to gain time.

Syrian state television said the amnesty covered “all members of political movements,” including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which led an armed uprising against Mr Assad’s father in 1982. Membership in the party is punishable by death.

The amnesty could affect some 10,000 people who Syrian activists say have been rounded up since the protests against the Assad regime broke out in mid-March.

The release of political prisoners has been a key demand of the opposition.

The offer came as members of the Syrian opposition gathered in Turkey for a conference aimed at overcoming differences and bolstering the protesters who have endured a bloody crackdown that has killed more than 1,000 civilians.

The opposition was quick to reject it.

“This shows weakness on the part of the regime,” said Mohammad Abdullah, a Washington-based Syrian dissident who was attending the conference in Antalya, Turkey.

Mr Abdullah, whose father, Ali Abdullah, is a well-known political prisoner, said the move would have been a good one had it come in the first week of the uprising, not after hundreds of protesters have been killed.

“The opposition now will accept nothing less than regime change,” he said.

In Washington, the Obama administration expressed doubts over the amnesty offer and demanded that Mr Assad prove to a sceptical world that he is serious about reform.

“He’s said a lot of things in recent weeks and months, but we’ve seen very little concrete action,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.

“It just underscores the fact that he needs to take concrete steps, not rhetoric, to address what’s going on in the country.”

Also, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Syria’s alleged torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy underscores that the government is making no effort to institute real reform.

Mrs Clinton said she hoped the child did not die in vain, and that Mr Assad’s regime ends its brutal crackdown.

The killing outraged Syrians since images of the body appeared on YouTube. Syria’s government has not addressed the claims by an opposition group that its security forces were responsible for the death.

Syria’s Russian allies welcomed the move as a serious step toward reform.

“Moscow pins high hopes on the opposition to take it as an invitation for talks,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying by the Itar-Tass news agency.

The Syrian state TV report said the amnesty covers “crimes committed before May 31” and reduces criminal sentences for felony convictions in half unless a personal lawsuit is involved.