Assad says truce reliant on halting aid to rebels

A car bomb killed 13 people in central Damascus yesterday as President Bashar al-Assad told an international mediator seeking a truce in Syria’s civil war that the key to any political solution was to stop arming rebels.

The bomb exploded outside a police station in the mainly Christian central Bab Touma district of the capital while Assad held talks with UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is pushing for a temporary ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

State news agency Sana said the president claimed Syria supported “any sincere effort to find a political solution to the crisis, based on respect for Syrian sovereignty and rejecting foreign intervention”.

Any proposal “must be centred around the principle of halting the terrorism and... commitment by the countries involved in supporting, arming and harbouring the terrorists in Syria to stop these actions”, Sana quoted Assad as saying.

Syrian authorities blame neighbouring Turkey, in particular, for the bloodshed because it has sheltered mainly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority, which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. Gulf Sunni powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar also support arming the rebels.

Syria’s conflict, which started with peaceful protests for reform, has escalated into a civil war marked by heavy use of artillery and air power by Assad’s forces, and regular bombings against symbols of his authority in Syria’s main cities by rebels.

The interior ministry said the Bab Touma bomb, on the edge of the old city of Damascus, killed 13 people. Security forces cut off access to the area. Television pictures showed shattered glass on the road and several burnt out cars.

Speaking after his meeting with Assad, Brahimi gave few details of the talks but reiterated his call for a pause in the violence, which activists say has killed more than 30,000 people since the uprising against Assad erupted in March last year.

“Everyone can start this [ceasefire] when they want, today or tomorrow for example, for the period of the Eid and beyond,” he told reporters at a Damascus hotel.