Syrian rebels hold talks with Kerry, G8 ministers in UK

Syrian Opposition leaders today met US Secretary of State John Kerry and G8 foreign ministers here to seek a "political" breakthrough of the country's civil unrest on the sidelines of an official G8 ministerial meet with North Korean nuclear crisis and Iran high on the agenda.
At the discussion with the G8 ministers, Syrian opposition prime Minister Ghassan Hitto and Syrian National Coalition vice-presidents George Sabra and Soheir Atassi and other civilian leaders pushed for lifting an arms embargo on Syria to topple the President Bashar al-Assad regime.
"I will be joining and convening some of those meetings to discuss the urgent humanitarian needs and the urgent need for a political and diplomatic breakthrough," British foreign secretary William Hague told reporters in reference to the meeting.

"This (Syria) is turning into the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the 21st century so far and we cannot watch this happen," he added.
Syria slipped into its third year of the devastating civil war this year as the rebels have been waging an uprising to oust Assad in which an estimated 70,000 people said to have been killed and millions forced to flee their honmes.
Syria's Opposition umbrella group the National Coalition is recognised by the US and UK and many other Western and Arab countries as the sole representative of the Syrian people.

The Syrian Opposition was formally granted an Arab League seat last month.

The ongoing civil unrest in the country is at the top of the agenda of the two-day foreign minister's meeting from today being hosted by the UK in the run-up to the official summit of the Group of Eight nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US - in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland in June.
In keeping with the London meet's central theme of conflict prevention and resolution, Kerry is also set to meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in a bid to persuade Moscow, a key ally of Damascus, to help break the international stalemate on the conflict.