BEIRUT/AMMAN: The head of Syria’s top opposition body said Thursday he was ready to step down for the sake of unity among dissidents as a U.K.-based rights group said Syrian forces were launching a heavy assault to destroy the rebel-held town of Rastan. “I declare my resignation as soon as a replacement is found through elections or consensus,” Syrian National Council president Burhan Ghalioun told Reuters.
 
“I have not chosen this post for personal gain, but I have been accepting it to preserve cohesion. I am not ready to be a cause for division. The revolution is above personalities.”

Ghalioun, a sociologist based in France, was re-elected just two days earlier as head of the group he has led since August, a result that angered critics who had hoped to bring in a leader who would rectify what they see as Ghalioun’s failings.

These include failing to strengthen ties with anti-Assad forces in Syria, including a growing insurgency, and providing a liberal, secular veneer to an uprising whose armed element is drawn from Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority.

The prominence of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood in the organization and finances of the SNC, and the sectarian Islamist language of rebels on the ground, have alarmed religious minorities and secularists in the opposition.

The resignation offer was welcomed by some of Ghalioun’s more vocal critics, who said it could pave the way for the SNC to patch up its rifts in the process of choosing another leader.

George Sabra, a leftist who came in second to Ghalioun in the SNC vote, said it would now be forced to bring under-represented opposition leaders and activists inside Syria, into its deliberations, adding: “The opposition needs to show its democratic credentials and bring in a new face.”

The Local Coordinating Committees, an activists’ network with a presence in Syria that had threatened to quit the council because it was estranged from activists on the ground, called the move “positive” and backed off resigning.
 
In a rare acknowledgment of shortcomings, a leading council figure said the group needed an overhaul and should become more inclusive.
 
Bassma Kodmani, a Paris-based senior figure in the council, said by telephone Thursday that the LCC concerns were “justified and legitimate.” But she also said differences within the Syrian opposition were a sign of democracy. “Otherwise we would be just like the Baath Party and the Assad regime.”
 
In the northern town of Binnish, protesters this week held a poster mocking Ghalioun, saying preparations were under way to “crown him as emperor because no alternative among Syria’s 23 million population could be found.”
 
Unlike Libya’s National Transitional Council, which brought together most factions against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime and was quickly recognized internationally, the SNC has no real leadership on the ground and has not been officially recognized by the major powers.
 
The opposition is already reeling from significant losses over the past few months when rebel fighters were largely driven out of key strongholds – the city of Idlib near the northern border with Turkey and the Baba Amr district in the central city of Homs.
 
Meanwhile, violence continued inside Syria, as residents of Rastan said government forces shelled the town, and an opposition group said security forces carried out a campaign of arrests in suburbs of the capital Damascus and skirmished with rebels.

The account from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said a total of 40 people had been killed by government forces across the country Wednesday, could not be verified independently.

“The army is trying to gradually destroy Rastan,” Rami Abdel-Rahman, head of the Britain-based watchdog, told AFP.
 
He added that at least 30 shells smashed into the town in a 10-minute period, and urged United Nations monitors, deployed to observe a truce that has been violated daily, to immediately visit Rastan.
 
Encircled by the army and defended by the largest concentration of rebel soldiers in the country, Rastan has for several months been the focus of an offensive by the regime as it attempts to regain control of the town.
 
The U.N. Supervisory Mission in Syria reported heavy fighting Monday near Rastan , where activists said at least 23 soldiers and seven civilians died in fierce clashes between government forces and rebels.
 
Elsewhere Thursday, two blasts rocked the neighborhoods of Al-Jamila and Al-Furqan in Aleppo, while other explosions were heard across the northern city early morning.
 
In Damascus province, regime forces carried out raids in the suburbs of Irbin and Kanakar, where three people were arrested.
 
And in the town of Al-Qatifa, clashes broke out after midnight after the defection of several soldiers from an army center.

Clashes continue despite a truce brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan as part of a six-point plan aimed at ending violence that has swept Syria since March 2011, when the uprising against Assad erupted.
 
More than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died since the Syrian uprising began, according to the Observatory, including more than 900 killed since the April 12 truce came into effect.

Syria has sharply restricted journalist access during an uprising that began with mass protests which Assad’s forces sought to put down violently, and now features an insurgency that takes the offensive against Assad’s rule.

Syria has pledged political reforms to resolve the crisis, including parliamentary elections this week which followed on constitutional reform that allowed for political parties other than the ruling Baath – moves dissidents call hollow.

Damascus has maintained all along that it is facing a “terrorist” conspiracy funded and directed from abroad, not least by resource-rich Gulf monarchies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which have called for arming the fighters aiming to oust the Syrian president.

Assad sounded that theme anew in a rare interview with Russian television Wednesday, saying: “It’s becoming clear that this is not ‘Spring’ but chaos, and as I have said, if you sow chaos in Syria you may be infected by it yourself.”
 
Syria earlier this month sent the United Nations the names of 26 foreign nationals it said had been apprehended after coming to fight in Syria.

It described 20 of those as members of Al-Qaeda who had entered the country from Turkey.