(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
BEIRUT Dec 30 (Reuters) - Syrian authorities arrested two members of the country’s internal opposition on Wednesday as they were traveling to Lebanon two monitoring groups said.
Ahmad al Asrawi and Munir Bitar had both been appointed earlier this month to a joint opposition body formed in Saudi Arabia that also includes exiled opposition figures and representatives of armed groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad.
The two men were detained near the Lebanese border the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Another monitoring group the Syrian Network for Human Rights confirmed the arrests.
A Syrian opposition conference held in Riyadh three weeks ago agreed to set up a 34-member secretariat to supervise peace talks. That committee to which Asrawi and Bitar were appointed will also select the opposition’s negotiating team.
Damascus said it is ready to join U.N.-sponsored peace talks but has dismissed the Saudi-backed opposition body.
The United Nations is aiming to bring together Syria’s warring parties on Jan. 25 in Geneva to begin talks to try to end nearly five years of civil war that have killed a quarter of a million people.
Asrawi and Bitar are both members of the National Coordination Body the Damascus-based opposition group.
(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Dominic Evans)
MIDEAST-CRISIS/SYRIA-OPPOSITION:Syria arrests two opposition figures heading for Lebanon -monitors