Syria's Assad vows to free dissidents

DAMASCUS - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has promised to release seven dissidents jailed after trying to revive a democratic movement crushed by the authorities, two U.S. lawmakers said on Sunday.

Assad, however, told Representative Patrick Kennedy and Senator Arlen Spectre he was not in favour of Western style democracy as an alternative to the political monopoly held by the ruling Baath Party.

Assad, 42, has kept tight control of the political system since he succeeded his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000.

Kennedy and Spectre said they secured the pledge to free the dissidents during a meeting in the Syrian capital that discussed human rights and efforts to renew peace talks with Israel.

The seven dissidents where arrested this month after attending a meeting aimed at breathing new life into the Damascus Declaration.

Signed by liberal parties in 2005, the declaration demanded a democratic constitution and the lifting of emergency law and restrictions on public freedoms.

"The president said they would be released if they had not been already," Kennedy told a news conference.

Kennedy rejected Syria's stance that criticism of its observance of human rights constituted interference in its internal affairs.

"The greatest human rights people in the world have their voice because they transcend political boundaries of any nation state," Kennedy said.

Offering a glimpse into the thinking of the enigmatic Bashar, Kennedy said Assad made it clear that he thought democracy had failed in Lebanon and Iraq and suggested unity governments instead of popular democracy were the way forward for the Arab Middle East.

"I said to what degree then is Syria moving to that regard. He (Assad) said 'well, that will take time'," Kennedy said.

Bringing up human rights publicly is virtually unheard of in Syria, ruled by the Baath Party since taking power in a 1963 coup and imposing emergency law.

Spectre, a veteran politician who has visited Syria more than a dozen times, told reporters that public discourse would put pressure on Syria to treat political opponents fairly.

Among the seven arrested was physician Walid al-Bunni, a leader of what became known as the Damascus Spring, a movement of former political prisoners intellectuals and civic figures that called on Assad to part from the iron rule of his father.

Bunni and others now in jail already spent years in prison after the authorities crushed the Damascus Spring in 2001.