A new Syrian opposition organization, comprised of figures from inside Syria, will hold talks with representatives of President Bashar al-Assad in the Jordanian capital Amman to negotiate a ceasefire, a senior member of the Syrian National Council (SNC) told the Global Times on Wednesday.
He made the remarks as the UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi wrapped up a two-day visit to Beijing on Wednesday and China vowed to support peacemaking efforts.
"The Syrian opposition groups will soon form a new organization to replace the SNC and to absorb new opposition members from inside Syria. Despite the absence of a formal name at present, it will negotiate with Assad's government in Amman next week," said Bekir Atacan, a senior member of the old SNC.
The SNC, an umbrella opposition group mainly comprised of Syrian dissidents who have been living in exile for decades, has been often despised by Assad's government for its unpopularity and disunity.
The US is also working on forming a tentative transition government for Syria that will subsume the fractured SNC and include internal opposition figures and grass-roots activist groups, according to Foreign Policy magazine.
The new body, in which the SNC will have a minority stake, will be unveiled at an opposition conference in Doha next week, it said.
Asked whether the upcoming talks in Amman meant the Syrian opposition groups are ready to accept Assad continuing to be the president of Syria, Atacan said, "Yes, we accept that. But this doesn't mean an immediate ceasefire will come up. The fighting inside Syria will not stop until an agreement that satisfies both sides."
The SNC, which is dedicated to overthrowing the Assad government, had refused to talk with Assad in the past although the Syrian government said it was always ready to talk with opposition groups who are willing to put down their weapons.
However, the Syrian government remained skeptical about the new opposition body.
"The SNC has always served as a puppet of the US and Qatar. They will not surprise me with a new puppet," Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to China, told the Global Times in an interview on Wednesday.
"New or old, with new members or not, they never represent the Syrian people. They have only one master - Washington. The Syrian government never took and will never take them seriously," he said.
After efforts to establish a truce during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday last week failed, the UN-Arab League peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Wednesday in his first visit to Beijing since replacing former UN chief Kofi Annan as the international mediator on Syria on September 1.
Brahimi told reporters that he hoped "China could play an active role in solving the events in Syria," though he did not elaborate, according to AFP.
During their talks, Yang explained China's new four-point proposal on a political resolution to the Syrian conflict, urging all parties in Syria to cease the violence and begin a political transition at an early date.
"A political resolution is the only pragmatic option in Syria," Yang was quoted by the Xinhua News Agency as saying.
He also pledged support for Brahimi's mediation efforts for peace in Syria, Xinhua said.
China also has its own concerns in Syria. A Chinese anti-terrorism official told the Global Times this week that China has acquired evidence suggesting that a group of Chinese separatists from the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement have been operating inside Syria to gain jihad experience and recognition from other international jihadist groups.
The disclosure of this information was aimed at showing the world the danger of the frequently proposed military intervention in Syria, which may help carve out more havens for international jihadists, as has happened in Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan, a source familiar with the issue said on condition of anonymity.
Agencies contributed to this story