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Syria rebel chief urges Annan to declare peace plan over
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (center R) meets with U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan (center L) in Damascus May 29, 2012, in this handout photograph released by Syria's national news agency SANA. Credit: Reuters/SANA
By Mariam Karouny
BEIRUT | Thu May 31, 2012 6:08pm IST
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's main rebel commander urged Kofi Annan on Thursday to announce that his peace plan had failed to free insurgents from any commitment to a ceasefire deal, which the United States said may collapse and trigger a broader Middle East crisis.
Colonel Riad al-Asaad, who is based in Turkey, contradicted a statement by the rebels inside Syria who issued a 48-hour ultimatum on Wednesday for President Bashar al-Assad to abide by the conditions of Annan's plan.
"There is no deadline, but we want Kofi Annan to issue a declaration announcing the failure of this plan so that we would be free to carry out any military operation against the regime," Asaad told Al Jazeera television.
Annan's plan has not stemmed bloodshed in Syria and the U.S. envoy to the United Nations warned that unless the Security Council acts swiftly to pressure Syria to end its crackdown on opposition, countries may act outside of the world body.
Susan Rice outlined what she said was both a worst case and most likely scenario in which "the violence escalates, the conflict spreads and intensifies ... It involves countries in the region, it takes on increasingly sectarian forms, and we have a major crisis not only in Syria but in the region."
In that case Syria - a mainly Sunni Muslim country whose Alawite leader is allied to Shi'ite power Iran - would become "a proxy conflict with arms coming in from all sides" and world powers would consider taking unilateral actions, Rice said.
The rival statements from rebels inside and outside Syria showed once again how deep divisions run between Assad's foes, who have failed to unify either political or military operations more than 14 months after Syria's uprising first broke out.
U.N. observers on Wednesday reported the discovery of 13 bodies bound and shot in eastern Syria, adding to the world outcry over the massacre last week of 108 men, women and children in the western town of Houla. The United Nations has said the army and pro-Assad gunmen were probably responsible for the killings, an accusation that Damascus has denied.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday that another atrocity could pitch Syria into a devastating civil war "from which the country would never recover".
A senior army commander in Israel, which seized the Golan Heights from Syria in a war 45 years ago, said the country was heading for collapse and would become a "warehouse of weapons" for Islamist militants.
Asaad said rebels had so far honoured their commitments to Annan's plan. But activists have reported frequent attacks by militants and army defectors on Assad's forces since the April 12 ceasefire deal.
Government forces have also bombarded towns, fired on protesters and attacked rebel strongholds, killing many hundreds of people in the last seven weeks, the activists say.
HOULA MASSACRE
Outrage at last Friday's massacre in the Houla region northwest of Homs led a range of Western countries to expel senior Syrian diplomats on Tuesday and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.
Beijing said on Thursday more time should be given to allow implementation of the plan brokered by Annan, the joint United Nations and Arab League envoy for Syria.
"China believes that the situation in Syria currently is certainly very complex and serious," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a daily news briefing.
"But at the same time, we believe that Annan's mediation efforts have been effective and we ought to have even more faith in him and give him more support," he added.
Senior Arab officials pressed China to use its influence to help stop the violence in Syria.
"We hope it will redouble (its) effort to stop the machine of violence and death and to put more pressure on the Syrian government to respect its commitments under the Annan plan," Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled al-Sabah said on the sidelines of an Arab-China cooperation forum in Tunisia.
Beijing and Moscow have both vetoed two Security Council resolutions calling for tougher action against Damascus, while stressing hopes for a political solution brokered by Annan.
Russian President Vladimir Putin flies to Berlin and Paris on Friday for talks which European leaders may hope to use to lean on Putin to loosen Moscow's strategic links to Assad.
Ban, speaking in Turkey, said Assad must respond to world opinion. "I demand that the government of Syria act on its commitments under the Annan peace plan. A united international community demands that the Syrian government act on its responsibilities to its people," he said.
Syrian state television said on Thursday 500 prisoners who had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the uprising had been freed, two days after Annan urged Assad to take bold steps and immediate steps to rescue the plan.
Annan met Jordan's King Abdullah in Amman on Thursday to discuss the regional impact of the Syrian crisis, his office said. Lebanese sources said he would meet Lebanon's president in Beirut later in the day.
Major-General Robert Mood, Norwegian head of the observer mission, said on Wednesday the 13 corpses found in Assukar, 50 km (30 miles) east of Deir al-Zor, had their hands tied behind their backs. Some had been shot in the head from close range.
Mood called the latest killings an "appalling and inexcusable act" and appealed to all factions to end the cycle of violence. He did not apportion any blame but Syrian activists said the victims were army defectors killed by Assad's forces.
The United Nations says Assad's forces have killed more than 9,000 people since the start of the uprising, inspired by protests against autocratic leaders across the Arab world. Syria blames Islamist militants for the violence and says 2,600 soldiers and police have been killed.
The unrest has spilled over several times into neighbouring Lebanon. In the latest incident, gunmen kidnapped two Lebanese farmers in the country's north and took them across the border into Syria on Wednesday, a Lebanese security source said.
(Additional reporting by Laila Bassam and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Ben Blanchard in Beijing, Seda Sezer in Istanbul, Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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US raises prospect of intervention in Syria
America has raised the possibility of intervening in Syria without United Nations approval and accused Russia of pushing the country into civil war.
Hillary Clinton said the absence of UN support for action in Syria, due mainly to Russia's opposition, 'makes it harder' to respond to the crisis Photo: AFP/GETTY
By Ruth Sherlock, Beirut and Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
7:42PM BST 31 May 2012
Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, bluntly criticised Russia's continued backing for President Bashar al-Assad's regime yesterday. This support was illustrated last night by the disclosure that a Russian cargo ship carrying weapons had docked in Syria last Saturday, one day after the massacre in Houla which claimed at least 108 civilian lives.
Addressing students in Denmark, Mrs Clinton urged Russia to use its influence on Mr Assad to curb the fighting.
"The Syrians are not going to listen to us. They will listen - maybe - to the Russians, so we have to keep pushing them," she said.
Russian officials, added Mrs Clinton, "are telling me they don't want to see a civil war. I have been telling them their policy is going help to contribute to a civil war." Western governments believe that diplomatic cover afforded by the Kremlin has emboldened Mr Assad and encouraged him to resist pressure to negotiate a settlement of the conflict.
Earlier, Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the UN, said that Russia's veto-wielding membership of the Security Council would not necessarily prevent international action. If the violence worsened and the peace plan proposed by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general, made no progress, some countries would consider whether to bypass Russian and Chinese opposition in the UN.
Related Articles
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_ Syrian regime resumes Houla bombardment -31 May 2012
_ The real dilemma on Syria: can the West go it alone? - 31 May 2012
_ Syria: Clinton says Russia's support risks civil war - 31 May 2012
_ Free Army's ceasefire ultimatum - 31 May 2012
_ McCain: time to arm opposition - 31 May 2012
"Members of this Council and members of the international community are (then) left with the option only of having to consider whether they're prepared to take actions outside of the Annan plan and the authority of this Council," said Ms Rice.
Leaders of the Free Syrian Army, the rebel movement, issued a statement giving the regime until Friday (today) to obey the Annan plan, or they would formally abandon a ceasefire.
But Mrs Clinton noted the obstacles to any Western military intervention, starting with the probable Russian and Chinese vetoes that would prevent any action from having UN support. "We're nowhere near putting together any type of coalition other than to alleviate the suffering," she said. "We have very strong opposition from Russia and China - but it's primarily from Russia - and that makes it harder to put together an international coalition."
There are growing fears that Syria risks becoming a "failed state" comparable to Iraq during the worst days of its conflict, when different sects battled for power and militant Islamist groups allied to al-Qaeda also rose to the surface.
Ban Ki-Moon, the UN secretary general, spelled out the dangers, saying: "The massacre of civilians of the sort seen last weekend could plunge Syria into a catastrophic civil war - a civil war from which the country would never recover."
One day after the killings in Houla, a Russian cargo vessel, the Professor Katsman, landed in the Syrian port of Tartous carrying weapons for the regime. Russian arms sales to Mr Assad totalled about $1 billion last year and outstanding contracts are believed to be worth three or four times that total. The Syrian army relies on Russia for most of its tanks, armoured vehicles and heavy weapons.
The UN has deployed 290 observers in the country to monitor a ceasefire called for by the Annan plan. But Mr Ban added: "Let me state plainly: the UN did not deploy in Syria just to bear witness to the slaughter of innocents. We are not there to play the role of passive observer to unspeakable atrocities." Some countries want more observers to be sent, noting that violence falls wherever they are deployed.
However, there is a real risk of Syria's fighting spreading into neighbouring Lebanon. Hizbollah, the Shia extremist group based in south Lebanon, is believed to have brought weapons into the country from Syria, including medium range missiles. The arrival of these arms in Lebanon will raise tensions between Sunni and Shia, already inflamed by the crisis in Syria.
In London, David Cameron convened a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the situation. Britain will consider pushing for "further sanctions", but the possibility of military action was not on the table.
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John McCain: it’s time to arm Syria’s opposition
US Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman said it was time to provide weaponry to Syria's opposition, as they expressed disgust over a massacre last week blamed on government forces.
US Senator John McCain speaks as Senator Joseph Lieberman looks on during a press conferences at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur
The Telegraph
9:30AM BST 31 May 2012
"It's time to act. It's time to give the Syrian opposition the weapons in order to defend themselves. It's not a fair fight," Sen McCain told reporters in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Sen McCain attacked Russia and China for opposing aggressive action on Syria, and President Barack Obama - who defeated him in the 2008 election - for not acting more forcefully on the issue.
"It is shameful that the United Nations Security Council should again be hindered by Russia and China by their vetoes for any significant action against Syria," he said.
"It is also embarrassing that the United States of America refuses to show leadership and come to the aid of the Syrian people."
Sen Lieberman, an Independent Democrat, said: "In my opinion this will not get better until the rest of the world at least gives the arms to the Syrian freedom fighters with which they can defend themselves and their families."
Related Articles
_ Syria dispatch: fear and hate in the killing zone of Houla - 30 May 2012
_ Syria: UN uncovers further evidence of massacre - 30 May 2012
_ Syrian rebels capture soldiers in Homs - 30 May 2012
_ Syria: Russian pressure 'hardly appropriate' - 30 May 2012
The senators, who are regarded as foreign policy “hawks” in Washington, expressed their "repugnance and anger and disgust at the behaviour of Bashar al-Assad and the recent massacre of innocent women and children".
A massacre last week in which 108 people, mainly women and children, were killed in the central region of Houla, has caused international outrage but so far few signals that more aid will be sent to the rebels.
Many Western governments ordered out senior Syrian diplomats in an apparently coordinated protest at the Houla killings, but Russia criticised the ejections as "counter-productive".
UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan left Damascus this week with no apparent concessions from the Syrian leader.
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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Safe zones needed on Syria's borders
By Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.)
- 05/30/12 01:45 PM ET
After three stalled diplomatic attempts to stop Syrian President Bashar Assad's government from killing thousands of unarmed civilians, it's time for the international community to intervene. The United States should partner with its allies to establish safe zones on the borders of countries neighboring Syria.
Since popular demonstrations began more than a year ago, Syria's democracy movement has evolved into a national uprising. Like their counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, Syrians took to the streets to demand political reforms. In response, the Assad regime has offered lip service to reform but in fact has confronted peaceful protesters with military force and a campaign of atrocities.
After shelling entire neighborhoods to rubble, the regime has blocked humanitarian aid from reaching injured civilians. Doctors and nurses who try to administer aid have been targeted. Tens of thousands are suffering. The United Nations estimates that as many as 17,000 Syrians have been killed during the 14-month uprising.
The international community is facing a crisis reminiscent of Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. We must confront ourselves, take stock of our values and decide how we will respond. Addressing this crisis will require coordinated action and a strong commitment from many nations, but leadership from the United States is essential.
The international community has a responsibility to protect innocent populations from mass atrocities when repeated diplomatic efforts fail. We committed ourselves to this principle at the United Nations World Summit in 2005 with the Responsibility to Protect initiative.
Several nations, including the United States, decided they would not stand by whenever war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing or genocide are perpetrated, or when despotic government leaders decimate their country's population.
U.N. Special Envoy Kofi Annan's proposal is meeting resistance, and even U.N. officials have acknowledged that the first group of observers has not stopped the killing. Activists on the ground estimate that 500 people have been killed since the negotiated U.N. "cease-fire" was enacted April 12. The Assad regime has shown no regard for prior agreements. Still, the international community should hold Assad to his commitment and accelerate the dispatch of all 300 U.N. observers.
Even as the United States supports the U.N. plan, we must take additional steps to address the humanitarian crisis. Turkey has discussed creating protected safe zones within its borders. We should encourage these efforts and commit our support.
We should also be prepared for the possibility of Turkey invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty, since the Syrian army has fired into Turkish territory. Establishing safe zones in Turkey or another country on Syria's border will allow international partners to administer humanitarian relief and better organize the inflow of Syrian refugees.
Taking these steps would put Bashar Assad on notice that the international community will not allow him to repeat his father's brutality. In 1982, Hafez Assad, presided over the slaughter of 20,000 people in Hama, Syria. The United States has acted in the past to prevent similar humanitarian crises, but sometimes too late.
We hesitated in Bosnia and Rwanda and regretted it when hundreds of thousands died, were maimed, tortured or raped. But we acted wisely in Libya, prevented a massacre, and maintained the democratic momentum of the Arab Spring -- until now.
It is true that establishing a safe zone on the border of Syria involves significant risk. What if the Syrian army targets the safe zone? What if Assad blocks refugees' access to it? How long should the safe zone exist? And who will pay for it?
These are questions we must seriously consider. But they should not chill us into inaction. The United States must lead the international community in establishing safe zones to protect innocent Syrian civilians and send a clear message to Assad: the killing has to stop.
One thing is clear: Assad has proven himself to be a merciless butcher who will kill and murder and torture as long as we let him.
No more Bosnias, Darfurs and Rwandas. It's time for the world to act.
Rep. Ellison (D-Minn.) represents Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District in the U.S. House.
Cross posted from the Minneapolis Start Tribune
***
Showing 8 comments
Winston Blake 9 hours ago
It is time for other countries to do the heavy lifting. The USA is not a military welfare program for the rest of the world. Balance the f*cking budget. In case you haven't noticed Representative Ellison, we have the same things going on in Mexico. Let the Europeans handle it, we have enough going on in our own backyard.
russell bowles 6 hours ago
in reply to Winston Blake
It's all up to the Arab League.
Guest 10 hours ago
It is time for other countries to do the heavy lifting. The USA is not a military welfare program for the rest of the world. Balance the f*cking budget. In case you haven't noticed Representative Ellison, we have the same things going on in Mexico. Let the Europeans handle it, we have enough going on in our own backyard.
russell bowles 6 hours ago
in reply to Guest
It's still all up to the Arab League.
Guest 10 hours ago
It is time for other countries to do the heavy lifting. The USA is not a military welfare program for the rest of the world. Balance the f*cking budget. In case you haven't noticed Representative Ellison, we have the same things going on in Mexico. Let the Europeans handle it, we have enough going on in our own backyard.
russell bowles 6 hours ago
in reply to Guest
Really! It's still all up to the Arab League.
Kate 13 hours ago
Time of talk has run out and smart action needs to take place. What makes a safe zone honored when this maniac doesn't care who he kills. He is no longer in control of his country and his military is killing whomever...he need to be gone.
Sam 14 hours ago
In 2007 Mitt Romney criticized Democrat Barack Obama's expressed intention as President to go enter Pakistan to kill al Qaeda terrorists even without that country's permission, saying "I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours... I don't think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort.” He called Obama’s statement about acting in Pakistan without Pakistani participation "ill-timed" and "ill-considered." http://in.reuters.com/article/.... Bush did NOTHING to try to catch OBL. He turned down the operatives who asked for reinforcements when they thought they had OBL pinned down in Tora Bora, then he closed down their Alec unit and shipped them to Iraq to prosecute his illegal war based on lies. Voters need to keep the Republicans as far away as possible from running our foreign policy and our national defense. Their VP designate Marco Rubio already rattled rockets at Russia, which has hundreds of nuclear missiles pointed at us, and he WILL do the same to the Chinese. Republican George W. Bush disastrously fostered an atmosphere of unspeakable brutality by authorizing the criminal torture of detainees http://www.politico.com/news/s... resulting in fiascos such as Abu Ghraib and atrocities this year that included cutting off fingers, peeing on Afghans, desecrating their scriptures and the slaughter of 17 civilians by one U.S. soldier. Bush wasted $ trillions of our treasure and tens of thousands of American lives including 4,400 deaths, diverting our forces from Afghanistan and from the search for Osama Bin Laden and instead sent them to murder hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children, in the process converting that country from Iran's worst enemy into its closest ally. An example of the Bush lies was reported by Sen. Bill Nelson who said that the Bush administration misled his chamber before a vote to authorize the war when they told him intelligence showed Saddam had unmanned aircraft that could deliver chemical weapons to U.S. cities. As it turned out, there was never any such report in U.S. intelligence files. http://www.globalsecurity.org/.... And "In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared
before the Iraq war, the CIA hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein
and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its
knowledge. But in the unclassified version of the NIE -- the so-called
white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war
-- those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt
assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's
report on prewar intelligence." http://articles.latimes.com/20.... Senior professional staff member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Fulton Armstrong wrote, "When we on the National Intelligence
Council finally got a full read of the National Intelligence Estimate on
WMDs, after its publication, a couple of us expressed grave
reservations about the fatally weak evidence and the obsessively
one-sided interpretation of what shreds of information it contained." http://www.nybooks.com/article.... Then Bush nominated a crook with mob links who is now in prison for corruption to run our Homeland Security. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02.... Also, Congress had to intervene and stop Bush when he tried to hand over our most important ports to a Muslim nation. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11....
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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Syria dispatch: fear and hate in the killing zone of Houla
The eight vehicle convoy of UN land cruisers and Red Crescent ambulances headed down the one mile straight road towards Houla past ruined buildings towards the dead horse that lies rotting at a roundabout.
Syrian refugees take part in a demonstration against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad outside Syrian embassy in Amman Photo: Reuters
By Alex Thomson,
Houla 9:02PM BST 30 May 2012
This macabre sight, along with an abandoned Syrian tank marked the beginning of rebel-held Houla. For a few hundred feet there was no sign of life and then quite suddenly the convoy was stopped in its tracks by a crowd that appeared from nowhere.
Women and girls joined in with the men chanting “Allahu Akbar” and “Assad, we will cut your throat” with the appropriate gesture of the finger across the throat.
I have scarcely witnessed such extraordinary scenes of people desperate to tell the world what they have been through. We were passed from family to family, house to house, by people, sometimes literally fighting to get their story to the wider world.
All norms of Muslim culture seemed forgotten as we were shown to Riya’s bed. A hauntingly beautiful 15-year-old girl was suddenly, gently rolled on to her side to expose a large dressing where a bullet had exited her abdomen. There are countless such stories. Everybody points to a group of Shia and Alawite villages to the west and east of town. Places like Kabu and Fullah which you can see clearly from the town centre. Everyone you meet says the killers came from these villages to attack the Sunni people of Houla.
They all say that the killers had written a local Shia slogan on their foreheads as they went about their business, shooting and hacking the families of Houla to death. One man spoke for many when he said: “When this is over and this is settled and we are victorious, we will kill them. We will slaughter them and we will slaughter their children. We hate them.”
Related Articles
_ Syria: Houla massacre 'perpertrators' will be held accountable - 31 May 2012
_ Syria: Russian pressure 'hardly appropriate' - 30 May 2012
_ Syrian rebels capture soldiers in Homs - 30 May 2012
_ Syria: UN uncovers further evidence of massacre - 30 May 2012
_ Syria: West may be forced to seize Assad's weapons - 30 May 2012
_ China and Russia reaffirm support for Syria - 30 May 2012
There is also agreement here that more bodies will be discovered. The UN commandeered a flatbed truck – they clearly believed it too. The problem, everybnody here says, is that the unrecovered bodies lie close to the Syrian army positions and nobody dares venture into the killing zone of Houla’s silent no-mans-land.
The burning question is this: if these militia were nothing to do with the government, as President Bashar al-Assad says, how is it 100 men were able to enter a zone where there had been intensive shelling, commit a massacre over several hours, and not be in danger from a single shell, rocket, or mortar?
* Alex Thomson is Chief Correspondent for Channel 4 News. He is the first British journalist to enter Houla since Friday's massacre. For Alex's reports from Syria, watch Channel 4 News at 7pm.
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog".
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Syria rebels issue 48-hour ultimatum
May 31, 2012 01:34 AM
By Dominic Evans
REUTERS
A Syrian woman carries her injured son who was shot in the hand by a Syrian border guard.
BEIRUT: Syrian rebels gave President Bashar Assad a 48-hour deadline Wednesday to comply with an international peace plan otherwise they would renew their battle to overthrow him.
The ultimatum was issued after U.N. observers reported the discovery of 13 bodies bound and shot in eastern Syria, adding to the world outcry over the massacre last week of 108 men, women and children.
The latest developments emphasized how the peace plan drafted by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan had failed to stem 14 months of bloodshed or bring the Syrian government and opposition to the negotiating table.
Colonel Qassim Saadeddine of the rebel Free Syrian Army said its leadership had set a deadline of 0900 GMT Friday for Assad to implement the peace plan, which includes a cease-fire, deployment of observers, and free access for aid and journalists.
If it fails to do so “we are free from any commitment and we will defend and protect the civilians, their villages and their cities,” Saadeddine said in a statement posted on social media.
Both sides in the conflict have violated a tenuous cease-fire over the past two months but Assad’s forces have been by far the worst offender, according to U.N. monitors.
Outrage at last Friday’s massacre in the town of Houla led a host of Western countries to expel senior Syrian diplomats Tuesday and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.
Major General Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of the observer mission, said the 13 corpses found Wednesday in Assukar, about 50 km east of Deir al-Zour, had their hands tied behind their backs. Some had been shot in the head from close range.
Mood called the latest killings an “appalling and inexcusable act” and appealed to all factions to end the cycle of violence.
He did not apportion any blame but Syrian activists said the victims were army defectors killed by Assad’s forces.
Video footage posted by activists showed the bodies face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, with dark pools of blood around their heads and torsos.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said in New York Tuesday that the Syrian army and “Shabbiha” militiamen supporting Assad had probably been responsible for killing the 108 people in Houla with artillery and tank fire, guns and knives.
The government denied any responsibility and blamed Islamist “terrorists” – its term for rebel forces.
The uprising began last March with street protests against Assad, who succeeded his late, authoritarian father Hafez 11 years ago to perpetuate the family dynasty.While initially a pro-democracy movement, the struggle has grown into an armed struggle increasingly involving sectarian rivalries pitting the Sunni Muslim majority against the Alawite sect, to which the Assad clan belongs.
Assad’s forces have killed 7,500 people since it began, according to a U.N. toll. The government, which says the unrest is the work of foreign-backed terrorists, says more than 2,600 soldiers or security agents have been killed.
Annan, trying to save his peace plan from collapse, told Assad in Damascus Tuesday that Syria was at a tipping point.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 100 people had been killed the same day. Syria’s state news agency said pumping had been halted to an oil pipeline in eastern Syria after a bomb attack Wednesday.
Diplomats said the U.N. Human Rights Council would meet in Geneva Friday to consider the Houla massacre, the fourth time Syria has faced such scrutiny since the anti-Assad revolt broke out in March 2011.
Assad has so far proved impervious to international scolding and Western sanctions for his crackdown and has failed to return troops and tanks to barracks, as required by the Annan plan.
However, the U.N. observers sent in to monitor a notional cease-fire were able to verify the horrors in Houla, which produced a wave of world revulsion.
Assad’s heavyweight international allies, China and Russia, stuck to their rejection of any intervention or U.N.-backed penalties to force him to change course.
Asked if Western and Arab countries were pressing Moscow to change its position, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday: “Russia is a country with a consistent foreign policy and any pressure is hardly appropriate.”
The West is itself averse to military intervention, although French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday that this could change if the U.N. Security Council backed it. But that is not possible unless veto-wielding members Russia and China allow it.
Turkey joined other countries including the U.S., Britain, France and Germany in expelling Syrian diplomats in protest at the Houla massacre, saying unspecified international measures would follow if crimes against humanity continued.
Stung by the expulsions, Syria told the Dutch charge d’affaires to leave. She was one of the few senior Western diplomats left in Damascus.
Despite the diplomatic deadlock, Annan is pressing on with his mission.
“It is important to find a solution that will lead to a democratic transition in Syria and find a way of ending the killings as soon as possible,” he said after talks in Jordan Wednesday. “With goodwill and hard work, we can succeed.”
It is hard to see where a breakthrough might come from.
China reiterated that it opposed military intervention and did not support a forced change of government.
Russia also reasserted its hostility to military action or to any further Security Council measures beyond a nonbinding statement condemning the Houla killings.
“We believe consideration in the Security Council of any new measures to influence the situation now would be premature,” Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said.
Russia and China have twice vetoed Western-backed Council resolutions condemning the crackdown.
Annan’s deputy Jean-Marie Guehenno told the Security Council that direct engagement between government and opposition was “impossible at the moment.”
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on May 31, 2012, on page 1.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2012/May-31/175225-syria-rebels-issue-48-hour-ultimatum.ashx#ixzz1wOjGy2r2
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Syria crisis: Turkey expels diplomats - live updates
• 13 countries have now asked Syrian diplomats to leave
• Security council to be briefed on Annan's talks with Assad
• China and Russia rule out forced regime change
Posted by Matthew Weaver and Brian Whitaker
Wednesday 30 May 2012 12.22 BST
guardian.co.uk
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Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2012/may/30/syria-crisis-unsc-annan-briefing
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May 30, 2012, 12:04 am
Syracuse University Filmmaker Killed in Syria
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Bassel Al Shahade, a Syrian filmmaker taking a leave from from a fine arts degree program at Syracuse University, was killed in Homs, Syria.
A Syrian filmmaker, who took a leave of absence from a fine arts degree program at Syracuse University to cover the carnage in his native country, was killed while filming in the war-ravaged city of Homs, the university’s chancellor said in a statement on Tuesday.
The chancellor said that the filmmaker, Bassel Al Shahade, died on Monday “while working as a citizen journalist and filming the attacks against the Syrian people by the government security forces there.”
Thousands have been killed in the 15-month-old uprising against Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and government forces have shown no sign of backing off a punishing military campaign to bring rebel cities to heel. Last weekend, over 100 villagers, many of them children, were massacred in Houla, a rebel-controlled village. As my colleague Neil MacFarquhar reported on Tuesday, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights announced that most of the victims were summarily executed in their homes.
Mr. Bashar’s government has severely restricted coverage of the unfolding conflict, making major international new outlets heavily reliant on the work of citizen journalists and freelancers, like Mr. Shahade, who have risked their lives trying to cover the bloodshed. Several have been killed in the fighting. And this month, Reporters Without Borders reported that a citizen journalist named Mohammed Abdelmawla al-Hariri was sentenced to death for treason in Syria after giving an interview to Al Jazeera.
The reports are often amateurish and one-sided, short clips captured shakily on a cellphone amid the chaos of an artillery strike and later uploaded to YouTube. In at least a few cases, clips have been blatantly embellished.
Mr. Shahade, 28, was different from most in that he could have easily stayed safely out of reach of the rockets and bullets that daily pound rebel Syrian cities. He was a Fulbright scholar pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in film at the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University.
But as protests broke out in the spring of 2011, he felt compelled to join them, according to those who knew him.
“He told me, ‘I couldn’t be away when the revolution is happening. I needed to come back. You can always study later,’ ” Rima Marrouch, a correspondent for NPR who has spoken with Mr. Shahade, said in a report on “All Things Considered” on Tuesday.
As the world has haggled over how or whether to stop the violence, Mr. Shahade helped narrow the lens with reports and documentaries on the personal struggles, tragedies and triumphs of those caught in its grip.
Even before the uprising in Syria, he tended to train his camera on the small victims of injustice, as in this artfully produced film called “Saturday Morning Gift,” based on interviews with a boy who survived the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon.
The circumstances of Mr. Shahade’s death remain murky.
NPR quoted a friend named Hassan who said he was with Mr. Shahade when troops started shelling their location in Homs.
“I stayed back to lock my car. I saw the first shell fall. Then the second. We took Bassel and the others to the field hospital, but the doctor said they were already dead. They had shrapnel everywhere,” Hassan said in the interview.
A video later emerged purportedly showing a raucous funeral for Mr. Shahade and three others. As the crowd chants wildly, the bodies, shrouded in white, are carried through the streets in the dark of night.
More video: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/30/syracuse-university-filmmaker-reportedly-killed-in-syria/
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Annan tells Assad "bold steps" needed to halt Syria violence
1 of 14. Residents shout as they gather around a vehicle carrying United Nations observers in Houla, near Homs in this handout dated May 26, 2012. U.N. observers in Syria have confirmed that artillery and tank shells were fired at a residential area of Houla, Syria, where at least 108 people, including many children, were killed, the U.N. chief said on Sunday in a letter to the Security Council. Credit: Reuters/Shaam News Network/Handout
GENEVA | Tue May 29, 2012 8:12am EDT
GENEVA (Reuters) - International mediator Kofi Annan told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday that "bold steps" were required for his six-point peace plan to succeed, including a halt to violence and release of people arrested in the uprising, a statement said.
"Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan met President Bashar al-Assad this morning to convey the grave concern of the international community about the violence in Syria, including in particular the recent events in Houla.
"He conveyed in frank terms his view to President Assad that the six-point plan cannot succeed without bold steps to stop the violence and release detainees, and stressed the importance of full implementation of the plan," said the statement issued by his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi after talks in Damascus.
Earlier, the U.N. human rights office said that fewer than 20 of the 108 people confirmed as having been killed in a massacre in Houla died from artillery and tank fire, with most of the rest shot in their homes.
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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