'Friends of Syria' 2nd meeting to be held in Turkey: Davutoğlu

LONDON - Hürriyet Daily News

AP photo

Second meeting of the "Friends of Syria" group will be held in Turkey, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said during a press conference in London today.

The first meeting of the group will be held on Friday in Tunisia.

Davutoğlu said Turkey expressed its request for the group to take concrete measures regarding the situation in Syria.

"Those measures will be clarified in tomorrow's meeting," Davutoğlu said and added that Turkey was ready to assist the people of Syria anyway it can, starting with humanitarian aid.

When asked if Turkey would allow the opening of a humanitarian aid corridor from the Turkish border into Syria, Davutoğlu said "Turkey would not hold back any humanitarian aid."

One journalist asked if the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was invited to the meeting, to which Davutoğlu replied negatively and added, "It is only natural [for us] not to invite the Syrian regime. We are gathering to talk about the massacres the Assad regime is carrying out in Syria. If they were to listen to us, they would have done so long ago."

"We are in no position to put the tyrant and the innocent in the same pot," Davutoğlu said and added, "to invite President Assad, to address the regime that massacres its own people would mean accepting its legitimacy."

When reminded of the Syrian opposition's statement that they would request arms from the "Friends of Syria," Davutoğlu said they would listen to the opposition's demands, but the main agenda of the meeting would be the plan laid out by the Arab League.