Syria’s Assad to chair new cabinet as demos spread

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was to address yesterday a new government tasked with launching reforms after protests demanding greater freedoms snowballed a month after they first broke out.

Meanwhile, thousands of Syrians attended the funeral of a man who died from his wounds after being shot by regime agents in the northwestern city of Banias, witnesses and activists said.

The mourners chanted slogans in favour of greater freedoms, against the ruling Baath party, in power since 1963, while some also called for an end to the regime, the sources told AFP.

About 2,000 women also rallied “in favour of liberty and in homage of the martyr,” in the centre of the coastal city, a human rights activist told AFP.

Assad was expected to deliver a speech during the first meeting of his new cabinet, tasked with introducing broad reforms, including lifting emergency laws.

“The speech will (then) be broadcast in the afternoon” by state media, said an official who declined to be named as state television began broadcasting the swearing in of cabinet ministers. Assad made his first public comments two weeks after the protests erupted, telling parliament the violence was part of a “conspiracy” against Syria but keeping mum on the notorious emergency law.

Prime Minister Adel Safar unveiled last Thursday his new cabinet, which is expected to carry out broad reforms including the lifting of the emergency law imposed since the Baath party seized power.

Tens of thousands of people rallied across Syria last Friday demanding greater freedoms, exactly one month after a rare protest was staged in Damascus calling for the release of political prisoners.

Friday’s protests stretched from the key southern town of Daraa, to the predominantly Kurdish north, via the central industrial city of Homs and the coastal cities of Latakia and Banias, activists said.

In Homs, baton-wielding police had waded into a crowd of around 4,000 people who chanted “freedom, freedom,” political activist Najatai Tayara told AFP by telephone.

The official SANA news agency said a policeman who was killed when violence flared during an anti-regime demonstration in Homs was buried yesterday.

Up to 3,000 protesters marched in the centre of the agricultural town of Daraa, near the border with Jordan, where security forces shot dead at least seven people a week earlier.

“Between 2,500 and 3,000 people showed up at Al-Saraya area in the centre of the city, chanting slogans in favour of freedom and against the hostile regime,” an activist said.

Security forces looked on as protesters chanted “Death rather than humiliation,” he said.

Hassan Berro, an activist in the northeastern Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli, said some 5,000 people, waving Syrian flags, demonstrated in solidarity with the people of Daraa and Banias.