Syria grants key Kurdish demand

President Assad is introducing concessions in response to unprecedented protests

People living in Syria’s eastern Hasaka region are to be granted Syrian nationality by a decree from President Bashar al-Assad, according to state TV.

Many inhabitants of the region are Kurds, who make up about 10% of Syria’s 22.5m population.

Kurds in Syria frequently complain of discrimination.

President Assad – who is under pressure from pro-democracy protests – met Kurdish leaders in the city of Hasaka on Tuesday to hear their demands.

But Kurdish leader Habib Ibrahim told Reuters news agency Syria’s Kurds would continue a non-violent struggle for civic rights and democracy in spite of the decree.

“Our cause is democracy for the whole of Syria. Citizenship is the right of every Syrian.

“It is not a favour. It is not the right of anyone to grant,” he said.

Until the last week, Syria’s Kurdish population had distanced themselves from protests posing an unprecedented challenge to President Assad’s 11-year rule.

But then demonstrations erupted in Hasaka and Qamishli, with protesters chanting “Neither Arabic, nor Kurdish, we want a national unity” – in an attempt to defeat any accusations of trying to make a Kurdish movement.

The latest decree is among a series of measures taken by President Assad in what our correspondent in Damascus, Lina Sinjab, is a bid to please the public.

He has appointed Adel Safar, a reformist and former minister of agriculture, to form a new government.

Three committees were established in less than a week to investigate the killing of civilians in the cities of Deraa, Lattakia and Duma, a suburb of Damascus – and to study the lifting of the state of emergency which has been in force for almost five decades.

The committees will also examine the census of 1962 which deprived many Kurds in Syria of their citizenship.

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