CAIRO, July 2, (Agencies): Kuwaiti Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister and Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid Al-Hamad Al-Sabah urged here Monday Syrian opposition groups to close ranks and outline a unified vision over Syria’s future.
In statements to KUNA before leaving Cairo following his participation in the Syrian opposition meeting, Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid said this unified vision is necessary for the success of opposition groups in meeting the democracy aspirations of the Syrian people.
He added that the meeting, organized by the Arab League, is meant to achieve this important goal.
The Kuwaiti minister, who is the head of the current Arab League Council, said the pan-Arab organization and the State of Kuwait are keen on backing any effort to resolve the crisis in Syria.
Sheikh Sabah Al-Khalid expressed hopes that the final communique of the meeting would assure the Syrian people, the region and international community that the transitional stage in Syria would fulfill the expectations and hopes of the Syrians.
He noted that the outcome of the meeting will be reviewed by the Arab League Council in its coming meeting.

Defection
A Syrian general from an artillery division and seven officers were among dozens of soldiers, mostly serving in Homs province, who defected and fled to Turkey on Monday afternoon, a Syrian activist and Free Syrian Army sources told Reuters.
Turkish state broadcaster TRT Haber said on its website that 85 Syrian soldiers, including the general, were among those who were sent to the Apaydin camp in Turkey’s Hatay province.
The head of the Arab League also called for the fragmented Syrian opposition to unite and said a UN-brokered plan for a transitional government in Syria fell short of expectations.
Speaking at the start of two two-day conference that brought together some 250 members of the Syrian opposition, Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby urged them not to waste the chance presented by the meeting to overcome their differences and band together to help lift Syria out of its crisis.
Opportunity
“There is an opportunity before the conference of Syrian opposition today that must be seized, and I say and repeat that this opportunity must not be wasted under any circumstance,” he said. “The sacrifices of the Syrian people are bigger than us and more valuable than any narrow differences or factional disputes.”
More than one year into the Syrian revolt, the opposition is still hobbled by infighting, although in general the disparate groups agree that President Bashar Assad should have no role in a transitional period. One main sticking point is how to achieve a peace plan that would end the bloodshed and Assad’s authoritarian rule. While some activists have called for international intervention in Syria, others have rejected the idea.
The meeting in Cairo brought together a host of opposition factions — including members of the Syrian National Council and the Local Coordination Committees — to try to agree on a united body to represent them, as well as to work out a plan for ending a conflict that activists say has killed at least 14,000 people since March 2011.
“We hope to walk out with one voice to have a national agreement with outlines of a transitional plan that will draw the way forward,” said Reema Flaihan, the head of the planning committee for the conference.
The main rebel group fighting Syrian government forces on the ground, the Free Syrian Army, was not represented at the talks. Faiz Amru, a member of the Joint Military Command, which is affiliated with the FSA, said the Cairo meeting was purely political, so rebels were not invited.
Turkey, which has been among the Syrian regime’s harshest critics, sent Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu to the talks.
“What we now have in front of us is a regime that has strayed so far away from a basic stance of rationality,” he said. “Your only interlocutor as representatives is the Syrian opposition and nobody else.”
The Arab League-led meeting follows an international conference of world powers over the weekend in Geneva that accepted Annan’s new plan to form a transitional government in Syria to end the country’s crisis. But at Russia’s insistence, it left the door open to Assad being a part of an interim transition.

Bombardment
The Syrian army kept up its bombardment of rebel neighbourhoods of the central city of Homs on Monday, a watchdog said, while violence killed at least seven people across the country.
Four civilians were killed in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which added they died when the car they were travelling in was shelled.
One civilian was killed when regime forces shelled the rebel-held town of Rastan in Homs province, the Britain-based group said, adding a rebel was killed in the same province.
Another civilian was killed in Daraa, the Observatory said.
An activist in Homs told AFP via Skype that many civilians remained trapped in the shelling of the Jurat al-Shiah, Khalidiyeh and Old City neighbourhoods of Syria’s third-largest city.
“Many neighbourhoods of Homs are still under siege, and it is really hard for us to get food or medicines in,” said Khaled al-Tellawy.
“Field doctors are amputating the limbs of the injured because they have no equipment to treat them with, and they can’t be smuggled out.”
The besieged neighbourhoods of Homs are among a string of areas that have fallen into the effective control of rebel fighters, the Observatory said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent attempted in late June but were unable to enter the hardest-hit districts of the city.
The Observatory revised its toll from Zamalka in Damascus province, where a blast killed 65 people during a mass funeral on June 30.
It initially reported at least 30 people had been killed in the town, situated 10 kms (6 miles) east of the Syrian capital.
Also in the province of Damascus, regime forces shelled the Hammuriyeh fields near the village of Beit Sawa for a third day in a row, the Observatory said.
It also reported violent shelling and clashes between rebels and regime troops in several other areas of the country on Monday, including the southern province of Daraa, Aleppo in the north, and the central province of Hama.
More than 16,500 people have been killed in violence in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule erupted in March last year, according to the watchdog.
Syrian attack helicopters bombarded a suburb of Damascus on Monday and Turkey said it had scrambled warplanes near the border in the north, as a 16-month conflict entered a more violent phase and diplomacy appeared to have failed.
Fighting has come to the gates of the capital in recent weeks and is also raging throughout the country as the battle to unseat President Bashar al-Assad increasingly takes on the character of an all-out civil war, fuelled by sectarian hate.
Syrian government forces have launched an assault on Douma, a city on the edge of Damascus where they stormed a rebel stronghold two days ago leaving bodies rotting in the streets of the nearly abandoned town.
“The bombardment of Douma continued today using helicopters. Some activists entered the city today and they saw at least seven decaying bodies in the streets under the sun. One man had been executed inside his house,” said Mohamed Doumany, an activist who fled the city two days ago and was now nearby.
“There is huge destruction in the city, which is almost empty. Only a few of its people remain inside,” he told Reuters by Skype.
Turkey said on Monday it had scrambled six F-16 fighters in response to three separate incidents of Syrian helicopters approaching the border. Turkey also scrambled fighters on Saturday and has moved guns and soldiers toward the frontier.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told Syrian opposition figures gathered in Cairo that their struggle to unseat Assad would end in victory.
“The Assad regime’s guns, tanks, weapons have no meaning in the face of the will of the Syrian people. Sooner or later the will of the Syrian people shall reign supreme. And you will lead this process,” he said.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a former ally of Assad who has turned decisively against him, says Turkish military rules of engagement have been changed and any Syrian forces approaching the border and deemed threatening will be targeted.
The Syrian government tightly controls access, making it difficult to verify accounts of fighting on the ground.
Anti-Assad activists said there were heavy clashes in Deir Ezzor province near the Iraqi border where villages were under army fire. Rebels destroyed two tanks, they said.
In rural areas near Aleppo south of the Turkish border there were clashes following explosions inside the city overnight. Forested areas near the border were on fire, activists said.
Syrian artillery pounded the village of Talbiseh near Homs on Monday, targeting an area near the mosque. Video footage posted on YouTube showed a blast hitting the mosque’s slender minaret, engulfing it in a cloud of grey smoke and dust.
Other footage showed high explosive rounds slamming into an unseen target behind the mosque every minute.
Security forces were also shelling towns in the province of Deraa, near the Jordan border, activists said.

Laws
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued three new “counter-terrorism” laws on Monday, the official SANA news agency said, nearly 16 months into a deadly crackdown on an uprising against his rule.
“Those who create or direct terrorist groups may be sentenced with 10 to 20 years of hard labor, but the punishment may be more severe if the goal is to change the regime or the structure of the state,” said the text of the laws passed on Thursday.
“If these (terrorist) acts result in death or disability for the victims, the death sentence may be imposed,” it added.
Moreover, “the financing of terrorism, including any action to collect and directly or indirectly provide money, weapons, ammunition, explosives, communication equipment or intelligence to aid acts of terrorism are punishable by 15 to 20 years in prison.”
The lowest penalty is five years in prison for acts that do not result in loss of life or property.
Another law says state employees convicted of “any act of terrorism — whether he is directly engaged, an accessory to the crime, or providing material or moral support to terrorist groups in any way — will be fired,” SANA said.
This law also applies to former government employees, who risk losing their pensions if convicted.
A third law provides for jail terms of 10 to 20 years with hard labour and a fine for any kidnapping for ransom, the news agency said.
SANA said that during a debate on Thursday, members of parliament said the laws were “needed at this stage, given the negative impact of terrorism on the security of the country and its citizens.”
Human rights lawyer Anwar al-Bunni said the new laws were not intended to establish security.
Instead, they were “another tool in the hands of the regime to defend itself and pursue its security solution,” said the head of the Syrian Centre for Legal Studies and Research.

Measures
Saudi Arabia on Monday called on the international community to take “decisive measures” to end the spiralling bloodshed in Syria, a cabinet statement said.
“The kingdom calls on the international community to take decisive measures to stop... the mass slaughter” of the Syrian people, the official SPA news agency quoted the government as saying.
President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime “must immediately end the massacres and fully implement the... (UN) plan aimed at reaching a political solution in line with the aspirations of the Syrian people,” it added.
The statement was released a weekly cabinet meeting chaired by King Abdullah.
It called for a “fixed timeframe” for the implementation of UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan which demands an immediate cease-fire and the withdrawal of troops from urban centres.
Saudi Arabia has repeatedly called for arming Syria’s anti-regime rebels and taking steps that would help Syrians “defend themselves.”
So far, more than 16,500 people have been killed in violence in Syria since the uprising erupted in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.