Lack of UNSCR resolution 'encouraged Syrian government to step up its war on its people', says secretary general
Julian Borger, Luke Harding, Chris McGreal in Washington, and Peter Walker
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 9 February 2012 08.19 GMT
Article history
Ban says he deeply regrets that the 'security council has been unable to speak with one clear voice to end the bloodshed'. Photograph: AP
The UN's failure to agree a resolution on Syria is "disastrous" for the country's people, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon has said as President Assad's government launched its most intense bombardment so far of rebel-held areas.
Speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, Ban said he had briefed the security council about a plan proposed by the head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, for a possible joint UN-Arab League observer mission to Syria.
But as witnesses in the opposition stronghold of Homs reported an unprecedented assault involving tanks and heavy artillery, with more than 200 rockets falling in the space of three hours on the opposition-controlled suburb of Baba Amr, Ban said the situation was becoming desperate.
"For too many months we have watched this crisis deepen. We have seen escalating violence, brutal crackdowns and tremendous suffering by the Syrian people. I deeply regret that the security council has been unable to speak with one clear voice to end the bloodshed," he said in a brief statement.
The failure of a UN security council resolution calling for the departure of the president, Bashar al-Assad, which was vetoed by Russia and China, was "disastrous for the people of Syria", Ban said.
He added: "It has encouraged the Syrian government to step up its war on its own people. Thousands have been killed in cold blood, shredding President Assad's claims to speak for the Syrian people."
The situation in Homs was "unacceptable to humanity" and "a grim harbinger of worse to come", the UN chief added, warning the instability would inevitably spread around the region.
Ban said he had briefed the security council about his talks with Araby and the proposal for an observer mission, which could involve a joint official envoy.
"We stand ready to assist in any way that will contribute towards improvement on the ground and to the overall situation," he said.
The Guardian has been unable to independently verify eyewitness accounts or casualty figures from Homs, but similar reports came from rebel areas around the country as Assad, spared from the UN resolution, appeared to speed up attempts to eliminate the threat to his regime.
One activist, Raji, speaking from a basement inside Baba Amr, said Syrian forces had begun using heavier artillery rounds with devastating effect. In addition to the 27 killed, he said many people were lying dead under the rubble of their houses. There were also reports that 18 premature babies had died in hospital after power cuts caused their incubators to fail, according to the BBC. State TV denied the reports.
In the face of the increase in violence, western and Arab governments urgently sought a fresh response. The Pentagon was reported to be reviewing contingency plans for intervention in Syria, from providing humanitarian relief to direct military action. There was no sign the Obama administration was seriously contemplating military options, but the president is under increasing pressure in an election year to respond decisively to the reports of mass killing in the country.
"We are seriously dying here. It is really war," Waleed Farah told the Guardian via satellite phone from al-Khaldiyeh, another rebel-held neighbourhood in Homs.
Hopes of quickly healing the global rift caused by the weekend's security council vote came to nothing. When William Hague spoke to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to ask Moscow to reconsider its vote and its arms sales to Damascus, Lavrov said there was no independent confirmation of the regime's use of heavy weaponry in Homs and elsewhere and insisted that the supply of Russian arms was legal, according to British officials. After visiting Damascus on Tuesday, Lavrov called for a political dialogue and a UN resolution backing the deployment of more observers in Syria, but the opposition Syrian National Council has rejected Moscow as a broker and is insisting Assad step down in line with an Arab League peace plan.
Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, said: "We of course condemn all violence regardless of its source, but one cannot act like an elephant in a china shop. Help them, advise them – limit, for instance, their ability to use weapons – but do not interfere under any circumstances."
China also defended its decision to veto the UN resolution and rejected Hague criticism of the vote as "extremely irresponsible" and "totally unacceptable".
With no sign of a break in the diplomatic deadlock, urgent efforts were under way aimed at building as broad an international coalition as possible to keep up the diplomatic pressure on Damascus. A "friends of Syria" conference is expected to be called in the next few days to agree joint measures, including fresh sanctions, anti-Assad resolutions at the UN general assembly, and diplomatic support for the opposition Syrian National Council with the aim ofcreating a credible alternative to the Assad regime. The next steps will be decided at meetings of the Gulf Co-operation Council on Saturday and the Arab League on Sunday. Most observers, however, believe Assad can weather such pressure as long as he can rely on backing from Moscow and Beijing.
Turkey declared it was launching its own initiative to confront what it warned was becoming a grave political and humanitarian crisis. The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has spoken by telephone to the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the foreign minister, Ahmet Davotuglu, flew to Washington to press for an emergency international conference. Western capitals support the Turkish initiative but argue the leading role and venue is better left to Arab states.
Turkey's ambassador to London, Ahmet Ünal Çeviköz, said Turkey would not insist on hosting a conference. He said: "The important thing is to form as wide as possible an international platform of like-minded countries to show the determination of the international community that there is no possibility of a return to the status quo ante. Assad thinks he can buy time but we have to show we have no more confidence in him."
Çeviköz said his government believed the death toll was "much more severe" than the 5,000-7,000 reported, and argued that priority should be given to ending the violence and addressing the humanitarian needs of the Syrian people.
"The people of Homs are facing not just bombardment but a blockade of the city, with a serious lack of food and medicine," the ambassador said. "There needs to be contingency planning on ways of reaching out to people and regions in Syria which are facing this crisis."
Turkey has floated the idea of a humanitarian corridor or a safe zone for displaced populations, but Çeviköz said those decisions would have to be taken at the proposed international conference.
If Russia and China continued to oppose such concerted action, he added: "They will have the responsibility of being the culprits in a humanitarian crisis."
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