ARBIL, Iraq, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Syrian Kurdish groups
opposed to Bashar al-Assad will try to unite this month to
explain their autonomy demands to Arab groups trying to topple
the Syrian leader, activists said on Thursday.
While security forces have clashed daily with protesters and
insurgents demanding Assad's downfall in mainly Sunni Arab
towns, Syrian Kurdish areas have remained relatively calm,
despite many Kurds' long-standing opposition to the government.
Syrian Kurdish exile leaders say they do not trust the Arab
opposition to heed their demands for self-rule in the mainly
Kurdish northeast of the country.
Kurdish groups representing Syria's largest ethnic minority
are also divided among themselves, with some factions backed by
Iraqi Kurds, and another by Turkish Kurd rebels of the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK), independent analysts said.
"There will be a national conference of all the Kurdish
parties to form one front," said Mahmoud Mohammad Bave Sabir, a
leading member of the Democratic Union Kurdish Party of Syria,
one of the oldest Kurdish opposition groups.
"The aim of the conference is to press the demands of the
Kurds in Syria and to open a dialogue with the Arab opposition,"
he told Reuters.
A date for the meeting has not been set, but it will be held
this month in Arbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Iraqi region
of Kurdistan, the activists said. All the main Syrian Kurdish
parties, plus intellectuals and independent organisations, have
been invited.
"The Arab opposition does not care about the Kurdish cause,"
said Sarbast Nabi, a Syrian Kurdish politics professor at
Salahaddin University in Arbil. "All they have promised is to
deal with us as Syrian citizens."
Kurds say they have been sidelined from the opposition
Syrian National Council, an exile group that was set up in
Turkey to coordinate a 10-month-old uprising against Assad.
"The Arab opposition is made up of Islamists and Arab
nationalists who do not accept Kurdish demands for a democratic,
pluralist, secular state where the rights of all minorities are
recognised," Nabi said.
Syrian Kurdish groups are also wary of Turkey's influence on
Syrian Arab dissidents based in Istanbul, given Ankara's
historic hostility to demands for autonomy for its own large
Kurdish minority.
In 2004, Syrian Kurds fought deadly clashes with security
forces for days after an incident at a football stadium in the
main Kurdish city of Qamishli. At the time, they said they
received no support from Arabs now leading the opposition.
But student activists say they are still mobilising support
inside Syria in preparation for taking to the streets.
Many thousands of Kurds live in the capital Damascus, as
well as in the northeast, and if they swung their weight behind
the uprising, it would deal another powerful blow to Assad.
(Editing by Alistair Lyon and Peter Graff)
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