Jisr has learned that there is an attempt to replace the head of the Constitutional Committee for the Syrian opposition, Hadi al-Bahra, with Nibras al-Fadel, who was recently appointed to the Negotiations Committee as a representative for independents.
A source in the Syrian opposition said that the appointment of the Alawite opposition member came in response to the loyalists appointing the Sunni Ahmed al-Kuzbari as head of the regime delegation, to prove that the Syrian opposition is not sectarian or monochromatic, as the regime claims. Another opposition source said that the Moscow platform would strongly push to approve this change in the committee.
The sources added that the measures to carry out these changes have not yet been set, but that it is expected that there will be a meeting of the members of the Negotiations Committee, during which new elections will be held. It is expected that Bahra will be transferred to the position of head of the High Negotiations Committee and that Fadel will be appointed head of the Constitutional Committee, while the former head of the Negotiations Committee, Nasr al-Hariri, will recede from the scene entirely.
Fadel is from al-Draykish in the Tartous province and before the Syrian revolution worked as an adviser to Bashar al-Assad, as well as managing a number of advisory institutions. With the outbreak of the revolution, he took an opposition stance and joined a number of Syrian opposition bodies.
He is the son of Mohamed al-Fadel, a justice minister who was assassinated on Feb. 22, 1977, with it claimed at the time that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the operation, however there were also rumors that the Assad regime had him killed.
The Constitutional Committee’s work has stopped since the Assad regime delegation withdrew from the meetings on the third day of the committee, with Kuzbari accusing the opposition delegation of “intransigence and insisting on imposing conditions before starting Constitutional Committee negotiations.”
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
