Profile: Syria's Abdulbaset Sieda
Activist carries double burden of bolstering Syrian National Council's credibility and reconciling Kurdish grievances.
Kurdish activist Abdulbaset Sieda, who was named on Sunday to lead the opposition Syrian National Council, is known for his integrity, but insiders say he has little political experience and some Syrian Kurds claim he does not represent their interests.
Sieda takes over the exiled dissident coalition at a time of mounting tensions between activists and rebel fighters on the ground inside Syria and the emigres who have been the main point of contact with the outside world.
"We are entering a sensitive phase. The regime is on its last legs," Sieda said a few hours after he was named as the new SNC president.
"The multiplying massacres and shellings show that it is struggling."
Sieda, born in 1956 in Amuda, a mostly Kurdish city in northeastern Syria, is seen as a consensus candidate capable of reconciling the rival factions within the SNC and of broadening its appeal among Syria's myriad of ethnic and religious groups.