In exile, opposition groups unite against Damascus

"In principle we can deal with any country on the basis of mutual interest. I think that this is the natural way of dealing with others," says Bayanouni. "I am ready to have talks with anyone in order to help my people - as long as the interests of our country are not threatened."

During the early 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood's armed opposition to the Syrian regime resulted in the death of 20,000 people in 1982 when the Army attacked the Brotherhood's base in the Syrian city of Hama. Today, however, like all other opposition groups, the movement emphasizes that political and economic, not military, action is the solution.

"After what happened in Hama we started changing our ideas, rejecting violence and asking for peaceful change," says Bayanouni "Our main principle is to accept others and live peacefully with them.

"After the death of Hafez al-Assad we tried to push [his successor] Bashar Assad toward creating a better, democratic solution," says Bayanouni. "We showed him that we are ready to help; that we were willing to turn over a page and forget the past.

"But during the last five years Bashar didn't take any real steps in this direction," he says. "There are still political prisoners who have been in prison for more than 20 years, and thousands are still missing."

"So in the last few months we and other opposition parties changed from asking for reform to demanding complete change," says Bayanouni, who sent British Prime Minister Tony Blair a letter of condolence after July's London bombings.

"Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood accept that they cannot control the country alone," says Najdat Asfari, a member of the Syrian National Council, which organized a recent Paris conference between Syrian opposition parties. "So they have asked for a consortium of all the people who believe in creating a democratic system for Syria."

Together the Paris conference and the subsequent Damascus Declaration for Democratic and National Change that was signed in October by opposition groups in Damascus and Beirut indicates that Syria's fragmented opposition may be jelling as the pressure from the international community mounts. In this alliance between secular parties and the Muslim Brotherhood, only the Kurdish separatists are absent.

"A real alliance between the Kurds and the Muslim Brotherhood would pose a serious challenge to the regime, but I don't think it's likely," says Robert Lowe, a Chatham House analyst who visited Syrian Kurdistan this summer. "Replacing a Baathist regime with an Islamic regime is not really in the Kurds' interest."

Mella, who met Prime Minister Blair in April and whose influential London-based party, the Kurdistan National Congress, is the most ambitious and separatist Kurdish group, agrees.

"The Kurds have become far from Islam. All we see of Islam is killing. They shoot us, they gas us. And they say that we are all Muslims," says Mella. "For 1,400 years we have been Muslims and they haven't for even one day understood that we are a nation. We are a Kurdish nation - not Arabs."

However, events are moving swiftly, and last Saturday Mella and Bayanouni arranged a historic first meeting. Both said that they were determined that the possible fall of the Assad regime should not be an excuse for further bloodshed.

"I am worried that the fall of this regime that for 40 years has destroyed political life in Syria might lead to a lack of stability," says Bayanouni. "We think that the Damascus Declaration will help to reduce the potential for instability in the country. We want to emphasis that people shouldn't think of revenge and killing."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Security Council after Monday's vote that Syria had been put on notice by the international community that it must cooperate with the investigation led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis.

"With our decision today, we show that Syria has isolated itself from the international community - through its false statements, its support for terrorism, its interference in the affairs of its neighbors, and its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East," Rice said. "Now, the Syrian government must make a strategic decision to fundamentally change its behavior."

• Wire services were used in this article.

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