French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe urged the Syrian opposition to stop "tearing itself apart" in an interview published on Friday

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe urged the Syrian opposition to stop "tearing itself apart" in an interview published on Friday, in which he also opposed providing Syrian rebels with arms.

"There are some opponents whose attitudes are seriously weakening the opposition -- as long as they continue to tear themselves apart and fight amongst themselves," Juppe said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde.

"We are doing everything to try to unite the opposition around the Syrian National Council and to convince them to be more inclusive, to welcome Alawites, Christians," he said. "They are not doing well enough.

He expressed opposition to providing arms to armed gangs in Syria, saying "this would precipitate Syria into a civil war that risks being dreadful.

Juppe stated that the global community had probably underestimated the staying power of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We thought there would be more defections, and more quickly," he said. "We perhaps badly measured the regime's ferocity."

Western and Arab nations have repeatedly called for Syria's fractured opposition to unite under a single umbrella, in order to use it against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.