DECEMBER 9, 2011.
Pipeline Attack Shakes Syria
A photo from a Syrian state news agency on Thursday shows smoke rising from an oil pipeline blast in Homs.
An activist network, the Local Coordination Committees, said 13 people were killed by Syrian security forces on Thursday, 11 of them in Homs.
Meanwhile, Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said the country, a major Syrian trade partner, would negotiate with Damascus to help seal a deal for a proposed Arab League plan to end the violence. The plan calls for Syria to let a mission of observers enter the country to monitor the situation.
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Mr. Zebari also said he met with the league's secretary-general, Nabil al-Araby, to discuss the implementation of Arab League sanctions on Syria, from which Iraq had abstained in a Nov. 27 vote.
"We believe this initiative and its execution is a real opportunity...to ward off any foreign or external intervention, and I believe it is the best way to a political solution that protects the Syrian people from killing and violence," Mr. Zebari said at a news conference in Baghdad.
Mr. Araby described the sanctions on Thursday as an "economic boycott," though analysts have cast doubt on the body's ability to implement any sanctions given the lack of an enforcement mechanism.
Syria and the league have been wrangling for weeks over the text of a protocol by which Damascus would let in the observers mission. Syria's government has requested more control over the observers than the league is willing to grant, a diplomat familiar with the issue said.
On Sunday, a spokesman for Syria's foreign ministry said the government was prepared to sign the deal, and expected the league to overturn all sanctions once it did so. Damascus has already missed several deadlines the Arab League has set to sign.
On Thursday, video footage of fire and smoke that activists identified as the Homs pipeline also shows tanks as shooting sounds go off in the background. A voice-over says, "In the neighborhood of Bab Amro, the thugs of Assad have bombed it and accused [us] of bombing it, but our whole neighborhood is under attack."
At least two other pipeline attacks have been reported in recent months, one in the oil-rich eastern province of Deir el-Zour and another near Homs.
Samir Seifan, a Syrian economist with the opposition, said the government could use the attack to deflect blame for shortages of heating and fuel oil by blaming it on saboteurs.
"As government revenue from oil exports slump, it has been unable to buy diesel fuel and they stopped getting heating oil, benzene and gas," Mr. Seifan said. "These energy products are a matter of livelihood and it's starting to have an impact."
Economists estimate Syria's oil production has fallen to about 220,000 barrels a day from 370,000 before the unrest. The EU, the largest buyer of Syrian oil, in September imposed an oil embargo on Syria, leaving Damascus to scale back production and depriving the government of about one-third of its export income.
The International Monetary Fund in September projected the Syrian economy would contract 2% this year, a sharp revision of its April forecast of 3% growth. But Mr. Seifan said Syria's economy could contract up to 20% this year.
This month, the EU stepped up the sanctions to ban European companies from doing business with the state-owned Syrian oil company that buys oil products for domestic use.
The sanctions, and the unrest, have taken their toll.
"Now that winter is biting, it's getting cold and wet here," said a resident of the capital, Damascus. "People are having trouble getting heating oil, and if they can get it at all, they're having to pay a premium for it."
In Homs, resident Mohammed Saleh said a gunfight punctuated by rocket-propelled grenades broke out Saturday after residents of two neighborhoods fought over a delivery of cooking gas. "It started with fighting over gas, and it ended with RPGs."
—Munaf Ammar in Baghdad contributed to this article.
Write to Nour Malas at nour.malas@dowjones.com
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