ISTANBUL – Syria's opposition finally agreed on Saturday to join an international peace conference. The exiled umbrella group the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) voted at a meeting in Istanbul in favor of attending next week's talks. The so-called Geneva II conference opening on Wednesday is aimed at setting up a transitional government to find a way out of the brutal conflict that has killed 130,000 people and made millions homeless since March 2011. Damascus had already said it would be attending, although the US Secretary of State John Kerry has accused the regime of diversionary tactics, saying “nobody is going to be fooled.” In a secret ballot, it agreed by 58 votes to 14 with two abstentions and one blank vote to take part, according to an official tally. And on Saturday, food aid entered the besieged Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus – where dozens of people are reported to have died of hunger and lack of medical care – for the first time in four months. In Damascus, Anwar Raja, a spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), said the first batch of supplies entered the Yarmuk camp on Saturday. Yarmuk is one of the areas hardest hit by food shortages in Syria. Residents there say 46 people have died since October of starvation, illnesses exacerbated by hunger or because they couldn't obtain medical aid. Raja said hundreds of boxes of food stuff entered the camp. He said much of the material was carried by members of PFLP-GC and committees in the camp.“The process is moving slowly since they are being carried on the shoulder to avoid sniper fire,” Raja told The Associated Press in Damascus by telephone. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists around the country, said an elderly man died in the camp earlier Saturday because of the food shortage. — Agencies
