Syrian National Council a legitimate interlocutor, says France
France considers the rebel Syrian National Council (SNC) a “legitimate interlocutor”, Foreign Affairs Minister Alain Juppé said at the Friends of Syria conference in Tunis on Friday. He also appealed for hospitalised French journalist Edith Bouvier to be evacuated as soon as possible.
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“We consider the SNC the legitimate interlocutor … the pole around which the opposition should organise,” Juppé said on arriving at the conference.
But, he added, it has work to do to become more representative.
“All sensibilities should be represented,” he said, including the Christian minority and the Alawites, a religious group to which President Bashar al-Assad’s family belongs and he said that formal recognition could be considered “when unity has been established”.
Juppé made a “solemn appeal” to the Syrian authorities to enable Bouvier to receive the “necessary treatment” for injuries received in a shelling which wounded three other journalists and killed US reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik.
Press freedom campaign Reporters Without Borders says it is "very worried" about Bouvier and Briton Paul Conroy, who was also injured and is still in Syria.
French ambassador Eric Chevallier returned to Damascus on Thursday, after being recalled in protest at the repression of protests on 7 February.
The foreign affairs ministry has refused to say whether his return is linked to efforts to bring Bouvier out of the country and he has not had permission to go to Homs, where the shelling took place.
When French reporter Gilles Jacquier was killed in Homs in January, Chevallier went to the city to fetch his body.
Discussions with the Red Cross and Red Crescent are taking place on the question, Juppé said.
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