Syrian forces retaliate as UN readies resolution
Western and Arab diplomats descended on UN headquarters to back a Security Council resolution that would endorse an Arab League call for Assad to delegate powers to his deputy and defuse a 10-month uprising against his family’s dynastic rule.
Arab League secretary-general Nabil Elaraby urged the council to take “rapid and decisive action,” while Qatari prime minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim warned the 15-nation body that Syria’s “killing machine is still at work”.
Eleraby made clear that Arab nations are trying to avoid foreign intervention in the Syrian crisis. The Arab leaders will make the case for the bloc’s plan, with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, French foreign minister Alain Juppe and Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague presenting a united western front.
The fate of the resolution depends on whether the Arabs and Western states can get Russia, Assad’s ally, to abstain rather than veto it.
Diplomats have been haggling for days to find a text Moscow will not block, with a main sticking point being the degree to which it expresses support for the Arab plan for Assad to give up powers, UN diplomats said.
Russia opposes a resolution explicitly backing Arab League calls for Assad to step aside, or which does not rule out the use of force to push him out. “The Western draft Security Council resolution on Syria will not lead to a search for compromise,” Interfax quoted Russian deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov as saying. “Pushing it is a path to civil war.”
British prime minister David Cameron told the House of Commons: “What… the foreign secretary is doing today with colleagues at the UN Security Council is trying to build the strongest possible resolution and say to the Russians: ‘Really, if you go on vetoing or preventing these motions, you are going to be completely outside, not just world public opinion, but the very, very clear, expressed opinion of the Arab League themselves.’ ”
On the battlefront, activists in eastern districts of the capital Damascus said troops fired in the air as they advanced beyond areas from which the defector Free Syrian Army withdrew, capping three days of fighting activists said killed at least 100 people. Tanks also swarmed into the area.
“The suburbs are under an unannounced curfew. A small grocery shop opened this morning and soldiers came and beat the owner and forced him to shut down,” said an activist in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood.
The uprising against Assad has entered a new phase in recent weeks, with an insurgency whose leadership is based in Turkey daring to show its face at the outskirts of the capital.
A last-ditch Moscow bid to broker talks between Assad’s government and rebels foundered when the opposition refused to attend, citing the continued killing, torture and imprisonment of the president’s opponents.
Moscow could lose billions of dollars in military contracts if Assad is pushed aside, according to analysts. Syria is one of Russia’s last allies in the region.
China is expected to join Russia in either vetoing the draft or abstaining to let it pass.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon called for consensus among the council to stop the bloodshed, saying: “Every day tens of people are killed… It is crucially important for the Security Council to act on this.”
Syria is the main Arab ally of non-Arab Iran, which has often put Assad at odds with other Arab leaders.
“America’s plan for Syria is evident and unfortunately some foreign and regional countries take part in America’s plans,” Iran’s IRNA news agency quoted supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying yesterday.
The UN said in December more than 5,000 people had been killed in the protests and crackdown. Syria says more than 2,000 security force members have been killed by militants.
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