ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu joined senior Arab and Western envoys on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to solve a crisis in Syria's opposition which threatens to derail a planned peace conference.
The Syrian National Coalition members meeting in Istanbul have so far failed to agree to attend the Geneva conference, provisionally planned for June, or who should represent them, and is deadlocked over appointing a new leadership and Western-backed proposals to widen its membership.
"Davutoglu addressed the coalition and told them that the international community is not taking sides but that the coalition needs to be representative to retain credibility," one source at the meeting said.
"The message was clear that if they don't re-organize themselves there are other parties that could attend Geneva."
Davutoglu joined senior Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, U.S. and French officials who have been monitoring the talks, now in their seventh day, at a hotel in Istanbul to meet with those opposition members who had not left in frustration.
"This is really the last-ditch effort. Either it succeeds or the coalition effectively collapses," said one senior source within the alliance.
The 60-member coalition has failed to agree on the wider involvement of a liberal bloc led by opposition campaigner Michel Kilo, to the dismay of Western and some Arab backers keen to reduce the influence of Islamists.
Failure to broaden the coalition, in which Qatar and a bloc largely influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood has been playing the driving role, could prompt defections by some of its members and undermine the legitimacy of the coalition.
Russia and the United States are trying to bring Assad's representatives and the opposition together at the Geneva conference, the first serious diplomatic effort in nearly a year to end a war which has killed more than 80,000 people.
Syria's government has said it will attend, but the opposition has not yet committed, potentially a major embarrassment for Washington and the alliance's other backers.
(Reporting by Khaled Oweis; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/turkish-foreign-minister-joins-push-solve-syria-opposition-155828816.html
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