DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has launched a “national dialogue” while freeing hundreds of political prisoners in an amnesty opposition groups and the US say does not go far enough. State television said Assad Wednesday set up a committee and charged it with “formulating general principles of dialogue that will open the way for the creation of an appropriate climate in which the different elements can express themselves and present their proposals.” “All parties should contribute to widening participation (in the political process), to the development of an electoral law and to a law on political parties,” Assad said. The opposition has previously dismissed calls for dialogue, saying that this can take place only once the violence ends, political prisoners are freed and reforms adopted. The demand that prisoners be freed was partially met Wednesday when, according to a rights activist, hundreds of detainees were released from prisons across the country under an amnesty declared Tuesday. “Hundreds of people have been released,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Fifty of them are from Banias, including the 76-year-old poet Ali Derbak,” he added, but “thousands of political prisoners remain in jail and are to be released at any time.” Washington, which has been upping the pressure by slapping sanctions on key regime members, said the release of “100 or so political prisoners does not go far enough.” “The release of some political prisoners is not the release of all political prisoners. We need to see all political prisoners released,” State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. Syrian opposition groups meeting in Turkey to plan for Assad's demise too snubbed the amnesty offer. The three-day gathering – titled “Conference for Change in Syria” – opened with the Syrian national anthem and a minute of silence for “the martyrs” killed in bloody crackdowns on street protests simmering in Syria. Speakers said Assad's amnesty offer did not go far enough and came too late. “We demanded this amnesty several years ago,” said Abdel Razak Eid, an activist from the Damascus Declaration, a reformist group launched in 2005 to demand democratic change, “but it's late in coming.” – Agence France
