Syrian Opposition Leader Skeptical over U.N. Vote

A Syrian opposition leader voiced skepticism on Wednesday over plans for a new U.N. Security Council resolution demanding humanitarian access to protest cities where thousands have been killed.

"It is better to have a meeting between the interested countries and to have a political compromise," Haitham Manaa from the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCCDC) told Agence France Presse on the sidelines of a meeting in Rome.

He said such a summit should include "the United States, China, Russia, Britain and the moderate Arab countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco."

Manaa also rejected the idea of setting up humanitarian corridors in Syria.

"I think this is a very bad idea. It is very easy to have great concepts but what we look for and what we need now are realizable ideas. If it is theoretical, keep it for (French Foreign Minister) Alain Juppe," he said.

Diplomats in New York said that the United States is drawing up a new draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria, which would be the third time Western nations have tried to pass a resolution on the 11-month old crisis.

Manaa, who lives in Paris, is a leading member of the mostly Syria-based NCCDC, which groups together Arab nationalists, Kurds, socialists and Marxists, as well as independent opponents to Bashar Assad's regime.

He was taking part in a conference on the Arab Spring uprisings organized by the international Catholic community group Sant'Egidio in Rome.

He said Assad should be given the chance to quit peacefully and go into exile and called for a new political system open to all minorities, adding: "This is not a Sunni revolution; it is a revolution of the Syrian people."