Baath Party congress in Syria will be in June, Bashar to be elected a member at the RL
Syria, Politics, 5/5/2000

Well-informed sources in Damascus told the London-based al-Hayat daily issued on Friday that the regional congress of the Baath Party will be held on June 17 in Damascus after elections are to have been completed at the level of Baath Party branches on June 14.

The sources added that the conference is expected to elect Col. Bashar al-Assad, son of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, as a member of the party's regional leadership, which is the supreme commission in the Baath Party which has been ruling the country since 1963.

In statements published earlier in al-Hayat, Bashar said that the conference will be held this year to be the first since 1985. The need to convene this congress has become imperative after the formation of a new government chaired by Prime Minister Mustafa Miro, who is not a member of the party's regional leadership or of the party's central committee.

Howerver, convening the regional conference on June 17 will stay a mere proposal until it is officially announced at the initiative of the party's regional or national leaders.

If it is held, the conference will be a turning point by electing Bashar as a member of the party's regional leadership which already contains 20 members, according to latest elections that took place in the middle of the 1980s.

The sources indicated the possibility that members of the central committee will not be "compulsory members" to the conference because all the conferees will be elected from the grass-roots level at an average of one representative for each 1,000 Baathists, taking into account that the Baath party has some 1.5 million members The last regional congress had a decision to meet each five years.

Organizational, political and economic reports were prepared in 1990, but political developments pertaining to the peace process had postponed its convening. The same also happened in 1995.

Previous Stories:
  Bashar al-Assad to WSJ: Israel is mistaken if ot thinks its withdrawal from Lebanon is equivalent to peace with Syria   (4/29/2000)
  Four political detainees released in Syria   (4/26/2000)
  On the Syrian -Israeli track   (4/19/2000)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search