A second document by the civil society committees

The London- based al-Hayat daily said on Sunday that member of the "founding commission" of the civil society committees have formulated their second document to answer criticism and accusation addressed to them by government's officials and leaders of the ruling Baath Party with the aim to distort the image of the civil society's advocates, intellectuals and commission's members.

The draft four- page draft document includes 8 points and was undersigned by " general national agreed stances' aimed at defining the general background for the moves of the intellectuals, societies and forums, which the Syrian authorities declared to freeze until legal licenses are issued to this effect.

Al-Hayat said that members of the commission have not reached in the meeting of last Tuesday a final formula for the document and nine of them agreed not to release it officially. A matter which led to the withdrawal of one of the founding member, the Syrian writer Michael Kilo in a statement he released last Wednesday.

Al-Hayat added that some of the founding members proposed to send the document to President Bashar al-Assad.

The paper published the second draft document which bore the name " general national agreed stances" released by the founding commission of the civil society's committees and included 8 points.

1. Our citizens are free and the essence of their own existence and dealing with them is a guarantee for their freedom and rights, constitutionally and legally and also not to damage them materially nor morally.

2. We view our people as one people with no sectional, class or political differences;

3. Our homeland is an independent Arab country that we do resist any foreign hand extended againt it and cut any hand extended from the inside to the outside with the aim of material or moral violations against the homeland;

4. Our authority to enjoy transparency because it is the authority of the right and the law;

5. We have not to permit reforms to take us to a position similar to an East European one. A situation that makes the market replaces the state, fellowship instead of the economy and thereby destroys our society and changes our development to a stateless development

6. We support the battle provides for liberating our occupied lands, dedicate all our efforts and potentials for this purpose and we do not see in the settlement an end to the conflict between us and the Zionist enemy;

7. We back any unionist efforts carried out by our country and leadership and we convey ourselves into torches for the sake of Arab unity and the one Arab state of which we have been dreaming;

8. We do not accept but the dialogue as a means to solve our problems and to give up violence in all its forms and we are united in the face of any side resorts to violence or calls for it.