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Syrian opposition members have rejected an amnesty offer by President Bashar al Assad as a token concession in order to contain a crisis that has called the legitimacy of the current leadership into question.
The deal and the leadership has been "rejected and revoked", Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian pro-democracy activist, said.
Exiled opposition leaders and members met on Wednesday to close ranks and forge a plan for a "new, democratic Syria", in a gathering of activists 10 weeks since an uprising against Baathist rule began.
During the conference, members of the opposition will form a committee in order to liaise with the international community.
The conference, hosted in the Turkish coastal city of Antalya, brings together a broad spectrum of opposition figures driven abroad over the last three decades; from Muslim politicians crushed in the 1980s to Christians escaping repression.
US criticism
Meanwhile, in its harshest criticism to date, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the government was ignoring people's pleas.
"President Assad has a choice, and every day that goes by, the choice is made by default. He has not called an end to the violence against his own people, and he has not engaged seriously in any kind of reform efforts."
The president's amnesty, aired via state-run media, offered a pardon on all political crimes committed before May 31, 2011 and includes all members of political movements, including the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as well as all political prisoners.
Representative body
Abdulhamid, one of the delegates attending the opposition meeting, said the gathering "hopes to create a representative body that can be accepted by the protesters inside Syria that can meet their demands in terms of the opposition trying to play a role in getting their voices heard by the international community".
"This is not going to be any kind of government in exile," he told Al Jazeera, "simply a group of people who are willing to represent the movement internationally because the world cannot engage on a revolution that does not have any recognizable representatives.
"Our hope is to fuel that kind of body on an interim basis until such time that the Syrian people can freely elect a transitional council inside the country that can lead the country to democracy."
Turkey's foreign minister has welcomed Syria's announcement of an amnesty for political prisoners but stressed it should be followed by "comprehensive reform," Anatolia news agency reported.
"A general amnesty has been necessary for political reform," Ahmet Davutoglu said in a television interview.
"The amnesty would be useful "in principle" but would fail to resolve Syria's turmoil unless followed by a reform process that would have the effect of "a shock therapy" on the Syrian people, he said.
"I hope this is the first step of a comprehensive reform. This step is important, like a signal rocket."
Turkey, whose ties with its southern neighbor have flourished in recent years, has piled pressure on al-Assad to initiate reform, but has stopped short of calling for his departure.
While France, through its foreign minister, Alain Juppe, demanded "more ambitious and bolder" action from Syria: "I fear that it might already be too late," Juppe told France Culture radio.
Juppe said he regretted that Western governments had been unable to get the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution criticizing Syria and blamed the opposition of veto-wielding permanent member Russia for the failure.
PHOTO CAPTION
Images from demonstrations in Aleppo and Barzeh, north Damascus, taken from YouTube.
Al-Jazeera
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