The president of the Syrian National Council met the minister of Foreign Affairs at Casa Árabe

Abdulbaset Sieda, president of the Syrian National Council, met on Monday September 3rd with the ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, José Manuel García-Margallo.

During the afternoon, Sieda held a meeting with representatives from the Syrian community living in Spain. The leader of the main Syrian opposition group was supported by other members of the SNC, and the meeting took place at five in the afternoon at Casa Arabe’s headquarters (c/ Alcalá, 62), and it was included in the trip of the delegation to Spain.

After the meeting held last Monday morning, there was a press conference where the president of the SNC, Abdulbaset Sieda, announced the restructuring and expansion of the Syrian National Council. Mr. García-Margallo declared that Assad’s regime "can not continue another minute", and he confirmed a Spanish shipment of emergency humanitarian aid for the Syrian refugees. Likewise he asked the Syrian opposition for an inclusive unity program, with representatives and respecting ethnical and religious minorities, as well as female rights, with just one exception, that of those who support terrorism. He also mentioned Spanish transition period as a reference for the political future of this Arab country.

Abdulbaset Sieda
He was born in Amuda (Syria) in 1956, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Damascus and is an expert in the field of Assyriology and History of Religions and Ancient Civilizations by the University of Uppsala (Sweden), where he currently teaches Arabic language.
He is the author of several books and researches on philosophy, the Kurdish matter in Syria and on media manipulation. Simultaneously to his academic career, he has also taken part in political life and has been involved with civil society organizations for the last thirty years. In fact, he is one of the founders of the Syrian National Council, which recently elected him president.

The Syrian National Council
The SNC is the most relevant opposition group to the regime of Bashar Al Assad and was constituted on the 2nd October 2011 aimed to gather the main political trends in the opposition side and to become the representative of the revolution both inside and outside the country. Nowadays, the SNC gathers 80 per cent of the exiled opposition and its more than 250 members try to show their inclusive and open vocation, including signatories of the Damascus Declaration, members of the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria, representatives of the different minorities, tribal leaders and several independent opposition leaders. One of its main achievements has been to get the adhesion of Local Coordination Committees, for what Spain and the European Union consider it to be the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.