Syrian Freedom

Brahimi on the verge of quitting - #Syria

The envoy has been criticized by both the Syrian opposition and the regime.

Syria peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is on the verge of quitting amid growing frustration at deadlocked international efforts to end the worsening conflict, diplomats said Wednesday.

Brahimi is “itching to resign but being persuaded to hang on for a few more days,” said one UN Security Council diplomat.

“He has told everyone that he wants to leave, there is little hope that he will stay,” an Arab diplomat at the United Nations told AFP.

The 79-year-old former Algerian foreign minister was named in place of former UN leader Kofi Annan as the UN-Arab League envoy on August 17 last year. He recognized at the time that he faced an uphill battle.

Brahimi has been criticized by the Syrian opposition and President Bashar al-Assad’s government said last week it would no longer cooperate with him.

Like Annan, before him Brahimi has been increasingly frustrated at the failure of the major powers to agree to a plan on ways to end the two-year-old conflict which has left more than 70,000 dead.

Russia has vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions seeking to increase pressure on Assad, while the United States, Britain and France have stepped up aid to opposition groups in recent months.

But the Arab League decision to recognize the opposition Syrian National Coalition as the legitimate government of Syria was the final straw for the veteran UN troubleshooter, diplomats said.

“He wants to resign because he feels that the Arab League has taken themselves in a directions which is a bit different from the UN,” said the Security Council diplomat.

05/02/2013 - AFP

Syrian rebel coalition names envoy to Paris #Syria

French President Francois Hollande (L) shakes hands with Syrian opposition chief Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib after a press conference following a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on November 17, 2012. AFP PHOTO/KENZO TRIBOUILLARD

PARIS: France boosted its support for Syria’s new opposition coalition Saturday with a promise to let it appoint an envoy to Paris, but remained cautious about supplying weapons to rebels trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

France has been one of Assad’s harshest critics and this week became the first Western country to recognise the opposition coalition — formed last weekend in Doha — as the sole representative of the Syrian people.

President Francois Hollande met the coalition’s leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib in Paris on Saturday and afterwards told reporters that he planned to let the group appoint an ambassador to the French capital.

The post is to be filled by Monzer Makhous, an academic, although it was unclear if this would happen before the transitional government was formed.

Khatib for his part repeated his coalition’s promise to build a transitional government composed of technocrats rather than politicians, and said it would include representatives of all Syria’s ethnic and religious groups.

“There is no problem. The coalition exists and we will launch a call for candidates to form a government of technocrats that will work until the regime falls,” Khatib told reporters.

But he appeared to have made little progress on his call for the West to arm the revolt which has led to an estimated 39,000 deaths since it began 20 months ago.

“The (rebel) Syrians need military means but the international community also has to exercise control,” Hollande said, while acknowledging that France cannot act without agreement from its partners in the European Union, which has a strict embargo on arms deliveries to Syria.

EU foreign ministers were set to discuss the embargo at talks in Brussels on Monday.

France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday he would raise the idea of modifying the embargo to exclude defensive weapons for the rebels to help them protect areas they hold from bombardment by forces loyal to Assad.

“The protection of liberated zones can only be done in the framework of the international community,” Hollande said after meeting Khatib. “Once an alternative government has been formed, it can itself legitimately call for protection and support.”

Hollande noted that Khatib, a Sunni imam, had assured him that the future government would include Christians and Alawites, the minority group to which Assad belongs.

France, Turkey and the Gulf states have so far granted official recognition to the new Syrian grouping, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, who met Khatib in London on Friday, said Britain was considering following suit.

Fighting continued in Syria on Saturday.

At least 18 people were killed across the country on Saturday, according to a preliminary count compiled by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria’s air force dropped deadly explosive-filled barrels on several rebel-held areas across the country, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists, doctors and lawyers for its information.

Most of the army’s air strikes targeted Idlib province in the northwest, Aleppo in the north and Damascus province. All three provinces are home to highly organised rebel groups.

After battles with the army that have lasted several weeks, rebels seized control of Hamdan airport in the eastern town of Albu Kamal near the border with Iraq, said the Observatory.

In Damascus, four civilians were killed when the Palestinian Yarmuk camp was shelled, it said.

In Aleppo, two rebels were killed in fighting, and regime forces launched several air strikes on towns near the embattled city, including Hreitan and Anadan, said the Observatory.

A Turkish journalist held by Syrian government troops since August was freed Saturday and handed to a group of Turkish opposition lawmakers following their meeting with President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish media reported.

5 Nov 2012 #Syria : Syria: UN-Arab League envoy calls on Security Council to agree on resolution to help end crisis

Lakhdar Brahimi, Joint Special Representative of the UN and the League of Arab States for Syria. UN Photo/SANA

5 November 2012 – The Joint Special Representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States for the crisis in Syria has encouraged the Security Council to turn an agreement reached in June outlining the steps for a peaceful transition in the Middle Eastern country into a resolution aimed at helping to end the ongoing crisis there.

Addressing reporters in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, today, the Joint Special Representative, Lakhdar Brahimi, said that there is no military solution to the Syrian crisis, and that the only possibility was a political solution, with a political process agreed on by everyone.

He also said that a communiqué, agreed on by a range of interested parties, “should be turned into a Security Council resolution and he encouraged Council members to continue talks to reach such a resolution,” a UN spokesperson, Martin Nesirky, told a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

The communiqué – issued in Geneva on 30 June following a meeting of the UN-backed Action Group on Syria – called for all parties to immediately re-commit to a sustained cessation of armed violence in a bid to end the conflict that began in March 2011 and has to date claimed more than 20,000 lives.

The 15-member Security Council has met several times on the situation in Syria, but has so far failed to reach agreement on collective and effective action to tackle the crisis.

As part of his efforts to halt the violence in Syria, Mr. Brahimi has had a range of meetings on the matter, both regional and elsewhere. Last night, in Cairo, he met with Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, and the Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, Nabil El-Araby.

In June, the Action Group had also agreed on a set of principles and guidelines for a Syrian-led transition that meets the aspirations of the Syrian people, which includes the establishment of a transitional governing body that would exercise full executive powers and would be made up of members of the present Government and the opposition and other groups.

In addition, the communiqué had called on the parties to implement the six-point plan put forward earlier this year by the former Joint Special Envoy for the Syrian crisis, Kofi Annan, which calls for an end to violence, access for humanitarian agencies to provide relief to those in need, the release of detainees, the start of inclusive political dialogue, and unrestricted access to the country for the international media.

The Action Group comprised the Secretaries-General of the UN and the Arab League; the Foreign Ministers of the five permanent members of the Security Council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – as well as the Turkish Foreign Minister; the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy; and the Foreign Ministers of Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar, in their respective roles related to the Arab League.

In addition to the tens of thousands who have died since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began, some 2.5 million Syrians urgently need humanitarian aid, and over 340,000 have crossed the border to Syria’s neighbouring countries, according to UN estimates.

The Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), Ertharin Cousin, will be in Lebanon and Jordan starting tomorrow and until the end of the week to meet Syrian refugees and see the increasing humanitarian needs first hand.

Ms. Cousin will meet senior government officials in both countries and visit WFP food distributions in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon and in the Za’tari refugee camp in Jordan, according to the agency.

WFP’s Regional Emergency Operation – aimed at covering the food needs of refugees in neighbouring countries – was launched in July and is now expanding to include the new wave of arrivals of refugees in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Inside Syria, WFP has scaled up its operations and is reaching 1.5 million people monthly with food assistance.

The agency is one of several UN bodies assisting the ever-growing number of Syrians in need as a result of the crisis.

U.N. #Syria envoy to push in Damascus for ceasefire

By John Irish

PARIS, Oct 9 (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will go to Syria this week to try to persuade Bashar al-Assad’s government to call an immediate ceasefire in an 18-month-old conflict with rebels, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Efforts by Brahimi’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, to engineer a ceasefire collapsed within days, with neither the Damascus government nor opposition forces willing to abide by conditions for an effective cessation of hostilities.

Brahimi is to meet Assad as fighting rages in Syria’s biggest city Aleppo and government forces pursue offensives to dislodge rebels from provincial bastions elsewhere, causing increasing spillover into neighbouring countries especially Turkey, prompting Ban to warn against the danger of escalation.

“Brahimi is now going to the region again and he will visit several countries and after that he will visit Syria,” Ban told a news conference along with French President Francois Hollande after the two met in Paris.

Ban said Brahimi aimed to curb the bloodshed and negotiate a deal to allow more humanitarian aid into Syria, where a civilian protest movement has evolved into an armed insurgency and one million people have been driven from their homes.

“First and foremost, the violence must be stopped as soon as possible,” Ban said. Diplomats said Brahimi would first visit Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, all regional diplomatic heavyweights, for consultations before heading to Damascus.

In September, his first month on the job, Brahimi met Assad in Damascus and visited Syrian refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan. The U.N. envoy said afterwards that he had a “few ideas” but no full plan on how to defuse the conflict, which he described as “extremely bad and getting worse”.

On Monday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul warned that “worst case scenarios” were playing out in Syria as Turkey’s army fired shells over the border for the sixth day running in response to shelling from the Syrian side. Northern Syria near the Turkish border has seen heavy fighting in the civil war.

LEERY OF UNILATERAL CEASEFIRE

Asked how Assad reacted to calls for a ceasefire, Ban said he had conveyed a “strong message” for a unilateral truce.

“Of course, their reaction was what will happen if they do it and the opposition forces continue (to fight)?” he said.

Ban said he was discussing how to provide assurances to both rebels and the government in talks with the U.N. Security Council and countries in the region. “I am getting positive support from the key countries,” he said.

He repeated a call for those countries providing weapons to both sides to stop. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have backed the rebels, while Assad’s main allies are Iran and Russia.

Turkey has bolstered its military presence along the 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria and responded in kind to gunfire and shelling coming from the south, where Assad’s forces have been battling insurgents holding swathes of territory.

Hollande, among the most outspoken Western critics of Assad, said he would push for more punitive sanctions against Damascus in hope of forcing the Syrian leader to the negotiating table.

“The difficulty we are facing is not linked to the U.S. election, but to the division at the U.N. Security Council to take immediate decisions that would be useful to the Syrian people,” he said.

Russia and China have vetoed Western-backed attempts to have the Council pass harsh U.N. sanctions aimed at isolating Assad.

Activists say more than 30,000 people have been killed in the uprising against Assad.

#Syria defection: Nawaf Fares defects and is ‘in Qatar’

Watch video here.

Syria’s envoy to Baghdad has defected to the opposition and, according to Iraqi officials, is in Qatar.

Nawaf Fares, the first senior Syrian diplomat to abandon President Bashar al-Assad, has urged other politicians and military figures to follow suit.

News of his whereabouts came from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari. His defection was first reported by Qatar-based TV channel al-Jazeera.

Syria has responded by formally dismissing Mr Fares from his post.

Meanwhile, government forces have shelled an area of Damascus, activists have reported.

Nawaf Fares

Head of Sunni Uqaydat tribe, straddling Syria’s eastern border with Iraq

Served as top Baath Party official in Deir al-Zour province

Appointed Baghdad ambassador 16 Sept 2008

First Syrian envoy to Iraq for nearly three decades

Resigns from Baath Party and as ambassador 11 July 2012

Mortar rounds were said to have been fired into orchards in Kafr Souseh in an apparent offensive against rebels.

One man died and a number of other people were wounded when tanks and armoured vehicles went into a built-up area, reports said.

Independent confirmation is impossible, as journalists’ freedom of movement is heavily restricted.

‘Tribal chief’

Mr Fares’s defection comes just a week after a Syrian general from a powerful family close to President Assad also defected.

He confirmed his decision in a statement broadcast both on TV and on Facebook.

With Syrian revolutionary flags behind him, he read out the statement saying he was resigning both as Syria’s ambassador to Iraq and as a member of the ruling Baath Party.

Analysis

Jim MuirBBC News, Beirut

The defection of Nawaf Fares is an embarrassing blow to the Syrian regime, and a clear sign of the stress the conflict is generating, but it does not necessarily herald a spate of similar desertions.

The government’s discomfort was reflected in an official statement from the foreign ministry in Damascus, lamely announcing that the ambassador had been “relieved of his duties”.

US and Syrian opposition officials seized on Mr Fares’s resignation as a sign that the regime is crumbling.

But the defection of the deputy oil minister earlier this year did not trigger a cascade of similar moves by officials, as he urged.

As with the case of Maj-Gen Munaf Tlas, who fled the country last week, the ambassador may have had specific reasons for turning.

He is a Sunni tribal leader whose area around Deir al-Zor has been heavily battered by government forces recently, as had Gen Tlas’s mainly Sunni hometown Rastan.

The defections are clearly a sign of the times, but given the gravity of what is happening, it is surprising they have been so few and far between.

“I call on all party members to do the same because the regime has transformed it into a tool to oppress the people and their aspirations to freedom and dignity.

“I announce, from this moment on, that I am siding with the people’s revolution in Syria, my natural place in these difficult circumstances which Syria is going through.”

Syria’s foreign ministry said he had made statements that contradicted the duties of his post and no longer had any relation to the Syrian embassy in Baghdad.

The BBC’s Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon says this is a highly damaging defection for President Assad.

Mr Fares, significantly, is also chief of a Sunni tribe straddling Syria’s eastern border with Iraq, our correspondent adds.

That area, around the city of Deir al-Zour, has become a hotbed of support for the rebels and has been heavily bombarded in recent weeks.

Syria has been convulsed by internal conflict since protests against President Assad began early last year. The protests turned into an armed rebellion and thousands of people have been killed.

Last week, senior army officer Brig Gen Manaf Tlas fled Syria via Turkey.

He was a commander of a unit of the elite Republican Guard and as a young man he attended military training with President Assad.

Gen Tlas had been under a form of home arrest since May 2011 because he opposed security measures imposed by the regime, sources said.

‘Clear consequences’

In a separate development, Western nations are pressing the UN to threaten Damascus with sanctions as it considers renewing the mandate for its observer mission in Syria which expires on 20 July.

They want a 10-day ultimatum to be part of a Security Council resolution on the future of the UN’s observer mission in the country. A new resolution must be passed before the mission’s mandate ends on Friday next week.

The mission had a 90-day remit to monitor a truce, but fighting has continued largely unabated.

The truce formed part of a six-point peace plan brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who has called for “clear consequences” for the Syrian government and rebels if the ceasefire is not observed.

Chapter 7 of UN Charter

Action in response to threats to peace, breaches of peace and acts of aggression

Article 41 enables Security Council to decide measures not involving armed force

Can suspend economic and diplomatic relations as well as rail, sea and other communications

If Article 41 measures are inadequate, Article 42 enables Security Council to take action by air, sea or land forces for international peace and security

Source: UN

Russia has suggested a 90-day extension. But Western states say a simple rollover of the mission is not enough.

A draft resolution has been circulated threatening Damascus with sanctions within 10 days, if it fails to stop using heavy weapons and pull back its troops from towns and cities.

The UK’s envoy to the UN, Mark Lyall Grant, told reporters that Britain, France, the US and Germany would propose making compliance with the ceasefire mandatory under Chapter 7 of the UN charter.

Last week, more than 100 countries called on the Security Council to invoke Article 41 of Chapter 7, which stops short of military intervention.

Russia has said use of Chapter 7 is a “last resort”. China, which like Russia has vetoed the two previous attempts to impose tougher measures, has said it will support a rollover of the mission.

Five possible scenarios for #Syria, and their impact on Iraq

April 06, 2012 02:08 AMBy Safa A. HusseinThe Daily Star

Iraqis celebrated the Arab Spring that changed the regimes of Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. But they are divided about the protests and uprisings in Bahrain and Syria. On the surface, it seems that this is merely a reflection of the sectarian divide in Iraqi society and politics, or of external influence on Iraq’s politicians, be it from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or wherever.

But there are more important factors that are shaping Iraq’s position on the Syrian crisis. In view of increasing popular discontent in Syria, its divided opposition, the loyalty of the bulk of the security forces, and the divided international community, the Syrian trajectory remains highly unpredictable. We can identify a variety of possible scenarios, some with implications that present substantial risks to Iraqi national security.

The first scenario is an Assad regime without President Bashar Assad. Like what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, the regime saves itself by sacrificing the leader or leaders. This scenario is possible but not highly probable, given rising tensions between the Sunni majority and the Alawite minority that dominates the regime.

In a second scenario, the regime attempts to manage the protests by force as was the case in Iran after the 2009 elections. Yet there are hardly any similarities between the two political systems, their popular support, and their security apparatuses. The Syrian regime has tried the security approach since the beginning of the protests, without success. Given the past year’s developments, one might expect the violence to become bloodier and more prolonged. Yet the international community would not tolerate such bloodshed, nor would such a regime fit into the post-Arab Spring Middle East. Thus this scenario would metamorphose eventually to one of the scenarios below.

A third scenario assumes military intervention like the NATO operation in Libya. But Syria is not Libya. Syria has a population density more than 30 times greater, leverage over Hezbollah in Lebanon, and far stronger military forces. Hence military intervention would require a far more advanced operation than was the case in Libya and would risk high civilian casualties.

In addition, should intervention take place, Iran and its allies would undertake potentially destabilizing action inside and outside Syria reminiscent of the cycle of violence in Iraq in the wake of the United States invasion. Intervention would also be welcomed by Al-Qaeda in the hope that it would in turn incite popular uprisings that would open the way for the jihadists eventually to take power.

In scenario No. 4, the United States., NATO and other allies create humanitarian corridors or designate safe havens guarded by the Free Syrian Army, or both, to provide relief to the Syrian population and dissident groups. The Turkish prime minister has suggested creating buffer zones for similar purposes.

The problem is that the FSA is not capable of confronting coordinated attacks by the loyal Syrian army. If NATO sends peacekeeping troops, they can either be held hostage by the Syrian army or would eventually have to engage them in battle. International forces were sent to Bosnia during the mid-1990s, but this did not prevent the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and eventually developed into a much larger military intervention.

The fifth scenario is arming the opposition, as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have suggested. Though this may be the easiest course of action, it could cause regional spillover into Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, and fracture Syria along sectarian lines. A divided Syria would become an arena for an Iranian-Saudi struggle (reflecting Shiite-Sunni tensions). Syria would slide to the edge of civil war as Iraq did in the period between 2004 and 2007. But with no decisive third-party forces in the country as was the case in Iraq, escalation to full-scale civil war similar to Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s seems very probable. The main side effect of such a scenario is that the majority of the rebels would become increasingly radical, allowing Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups to gain a foothold in Syria. This in turn would determine the shape of post-Assad Syria.

The United States, Saudi Arabia and other countries are weighing whether they can weaken Iran geopolitically by weakening Syria – via military intervention, arming the rebels, or creating secure zones. The consequences of such policies would be disastrous for Syria’s neighbors and specifically for Iraq.

The most significant regional jihadist presence lies across the Syrian border in Iraq. Syria supported these insurgents from 2003 to 2007. The consolidation of Iraqi government power has greatly weakened but not eliminated them. If extremists dominate the post-Assad government, or if Syria becomes a failed state, then the risk of a jihadist revival in this area threatening the stability of Iraq would be very real.

That is why Iraq hopes to find a solution in which reforms lead to peaceful transformation of the regime in Syria without a security vacuum or prolonged violence. The current effort by Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy on the crisis, could be the basis of such a solution. It would save thousands of Syrian lives during the transformation process and save more lives of Syrians, Iraqis and others in the aftermath.

Safa A. Hussein is a former deputy member of the dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. He served as a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force. Currently he serves in the Iraqi National Security Council. This commentary first appeared bitterlemons-international.org, an online newsletter.

Violence Worsening in #Syria in Spite of Pledge, U.N. Says

Associated Press

People looked out from a building damaged by tank shells in Damascus on Thursday.

By ANNE BARNARD and RICK GLADSTONE

Published: April 5, 2012

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Spasms of fighting convulsed parts of Syria on Thursday, with clashes reported only miles from the capital. Theleader of the United Nations said the conflict was getting worse — contradicting the Syrian government’s assurances to a special envoy that it was complying with his cease-fire plan.

The United Nations Security Council, meanwhile, issued a statement requesting that the Syrian government comply with the plan, particularly its April 10 deadline for a military pullback from major cities. The statement reflects the deep doubts of many nations that President Bashar al-Assad intends to keep his word.

Mr. Assad, who regards the opposition as terrorist gangs financed by Syria’s enemies, has habitually reneged on commitments aimed at halting the 13-month-old uprising against him, the most chaotic of the Arab Spring democracy revolts.

The Security Council issued the statement as the special envoy, Kofi Annan, appointed by the United Nations and Arab League to broker a halt to the Syrian conflict, briefed the General Assembly by videoconference from Geneva on his latest diplomatic entreaties to Mr. Assad and the opposition forces aligned against him.

Mr. Annan said the Syrian government had informed him of a partial troop pullback from the cities of Idlib, Zabadani and Dara’a and had pledged to complete the pullback by April 10.

He also confirmed that an advance United Nations team had arrived in Damascus, the capital, to prepare for the possible deployment of observers who would monitor a cease-fire after the pullback. Mr. Annan also announced that he would travel to Iran — Syria’s only remaining significant supporter in the Middle East — on April 11.

But even Mr. Annan, a highly practiced diplomat and former United Nations secretary general, showed some barely concealed frustration with Syria’s response so far. “The government has indicated that it will continue to update me on steps it is taking,” he said in the briefing. “But it is clear that more far-reaching action is urgently required.”

The challenge of Mr. Annan’s work was underscored by Ban Ki-moon, Mr. Annan’s successor as secretary general, who spoke to the General Assembly ahead of the briefing. “Despite the Syrian government’s acceptance of the joint special envoy’s plan of initial proposals to resolve the crisis, the violence and assaults in civilian areas have not stopped,” Mr. Ban said. “The situation on the ground continues to deteriorate.”

The United Nations has estimated that more than 9,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, including at least 500 children.

Syrian activist groups on Thursday reported clashes in the north and south, and Turkish officials spoke of a surge in the number of refugees fleeing across the border. News reports put the number at between 800 and 1,000 on Wednesday, adding to the 20,000-plus Syrians who have already taken refuge there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an exile opposition group in London that has contacts in Syria, said government forces attacked several towns across the country on Thursday, including two — Hraytan and Anadan — near the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in Syria. More fighting was reported in the Damascus suburb of Douma and the southern village of Kfar Shams.

Reuters quoted activists as saying that columns of smoke were rising from several buildings in Douma, just eight miles from Damascus, as explosions rocked the area and heavy machine-gun fire was heard.

Under the terms of Mr. Annan’s plan, the April 10 deadline for the government’s withdrawal of troops and heavy weapons from major cities is to be followed by a 48-hour period in which all combatants would stop fighting.

Many Western politicians, who have concluded that Mr. Assad is unfit to govern and unwilling to cede power, are skeptical about what they consider to be Mr. Assad’s insincere pledges to resolve the conflict. Despite their hope that the latest cease-fire plan will succeed, few see such a possibility.

“Can we be optimistic or not?” the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, told reporters in Paris. “I am not, because I think Bashar al-Assad is tricking us. He is pretending to accept Kofi Annan’s six-point plan while at the same time still using force.
”

#Syria rebels ‘have a right to weapons from abroad’

Thomas Seibert 01/04/12

ISTANBUL // Rebels fighting the forces of Bashar Al Assad have the right to weapons supplies from other countries if the world fails to stop the bloodshed, Turkey’s foreign minister told The National on the eve of a second international conference on Syria.

“The international community should take very concrete steps to prevent a massacre,” Ahmet Davutoglu said. “If it doesn’t happen, of course those who are being attacked will look for all the alternatives to defend themselves.”

Saudi Arabia, one of the countries attending today’s conference in Istanbul, has called for the arming of rebels fighting to topple the Syrian president.

The kingdom, along with Qatar, is also in favour of carving out a safe haven inside Syria from which the opposition can operate. Turkey, which shares a border of 900 kilometres with Syria, would be a key route for any large-scale weapons shipments to the rebels.

“People say there should not be any foreign intervention, but the flow of arms to the Syrian regime continues, and that’s not acceptable,” Mr Davutoglu said.

He compared the situation in Syria to that in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina the early 1990s, when Serb forces attacked Muslim civilians in a war that eventually triggered armed intervention by Nato.

“I made an analogy to the Bosnia case, when there was an asymmetric war: on one side an army with full capacity of attack, on the other side victims without any proper equipment to defend themselves. This is not sustainable.”

The world should not allow the Syrian government to continue with the violence. “Either there must be some international effort to stop these attacks, or there should be a clear message to the regime that there will be some international position to stop the bloodshed.”

Mr Davutoglu was speaking before today’s second meeting of the Friends of Syria, a group of western and Arab nations seeking to increase the pressure on Mr Al Assad to end the violent repression of protests that has killed more than 9,000 people since March last year. At least 75 countries will be represented at the meeting, which follows a conference last month in Tunis.

The United Nations-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan called on the Syrian forces to end operations immediately. Mr Al Assad accepted Mr Annan’s plan on Tuesday, but his security forces have continued their attacks. Turkey, a former close ally of Syria, ended its own mediation efforts last year, when the Syrian regime refused to enact political reforms.

Mr Davutoglu said he expected the Istanbul meeting “to give a clear message to the regime that these methods will not be tolerated by the international community. In Tunisia we gave a strong message, but now the message will be much stronger.”

In fact, he said, Turkey hoped the meeting would “take certain measures, new measures, steps, to stop the bloodshed”.

Mr Davutoglu said he could not go into detail before the conference. “But we want to have some more concrete steps.”

He also said the meeting would discuss getting humanitarian aid into Syria and would strengthen the role of the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group. A third meeting of the Friends of Syria would take place in Paris, he said.

The Syrian opposition and the Free Syrian Army, a group of Syrian deserters fighting government troops, have repeatedly called for weapons, but Mr Annan has warned against further militarisation.

Mr Davutoglu, who put the number of Syrian defectors at 60,000, would not be drawn on whether he agreed with the Saudi position on arming the opposition, but he stressed it was the international community’s duty to prevent further bloodshed.

“When the oppression continues and people are being killed - if the international community is idle and cannot do anything, people will start to think that they have the right of self-defence,” he said. “The responsibility is on the shoulders of the international community, rather on the people who are trying to defend themselves.”

While Mr Davutoglu, 53, a close aide and former chief adviser to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister, reiterated his government’s support for Mr Annan’s mission, he warned that Damascus was trying to gain time. He said Mr Annan’s plan “should not be seen as if it’s a mediation for the continuation of the Syrian regime”.

The Turkish foreign minister said Mr Al Assad was hoping he could secure his position by crushing the opposition militarily.

“This is what I call the illusion of dictators,” said Mr Davutoglu, a former professor of international relations. “They think that if they have time, they will control the situation and then they will make a cosmetic type of change.”

In Syria, as in other countries that shook off authoritarian regimes, this tactic would fail, Mr Davutoglu insisted. Even after a year of repression, Syrians were still calling for their democratic rights. “A regime or a leader cannot survive if that regime or that leader fights against its own people.”

Mr Davutoglu said the Syrian government lost its legitimacy the moment the regular army attacked cities with artillery, helicopters and the navy. “Even during a war, this is unacceptable. When you fight another country - even in that case it’s a war crime to shell a city indiscriminately.” He said Turkey condemned that kind of military operation as a “crime” when Israel attacked Gaza in late 2008. “Now the Syrian army is doing this against their own cities.”

Mr Davutoglu said he had no doubt that the Al Assad regime was doomed. “Such a regime cannot continue after all the crimes they committed against their own people. It is just a matter of time.”

Syrian Violence Escalates As Envoy Awaits Response #Syria

Posted Tuesday, March 13th, 2012 at 1:00 pm

Violence continued across Syria Tuesday as former U.N. chief Kofi Annan awaited a response from Syria’s government on his proposals to resolve the country’s deadly violence from the on-going crackdown on dissent.

“I am expecting to hear from the Syrian authorities today since I have left some concrete proposals for them to consider. Once I receive their answer we will know how to react. But let me say the killing and violence must cease.”

Annan, now the U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria, commented in Turkey after meeting with members of the opposition Syrian National Council. He left Damascus on Sunday, after two days of talks ended without a settlement.

Activists say Syrian forces killed at least six people in a series of attack across the country. Also, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebels killed at least 21 members of forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad during ambushes in Idlib province and the southern Deraa region.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby called for an international probe into civilian deaths in Syria, saying they amounted to “crimes against humanity.”

In another development, Mr. Assad set May 7 date for parliamentary elections. The elections are part of what the government calls a series of reforms based on a new constitution approved by referendum in February.

Opposition groups say the constitution is illegitimate and are demanding Mr. Assad’s resignation.

Also, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland questioned the timing of the vote.

“Parliamentary elections for a rubber-stamp parliament in the middle of the kind of violence that we’re seeing across the country — it’s ridiculous.”

The United States, Britain and Russia have each called for a halt to the violence in Syria, but the United Nations Security Council remains divided on how to resolve the crisis.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says his country will press Syria to accept a plan that calls for a “simultaneous” truce between government forces and armed rebels.

He commented Tuesday, a day after Security Council foreign ministers met in New York.

Russia and China have vetoed Security Council resolutions condemning the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown on its opponents. They say the resolutions called for interfering in Syria’s internal affairs.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the Security Council has “failed” in its responsibilities to the Syrian people and that the diplomatic challenge now is to build on areas where the international community agrees.

“It is encouraging that everybody is talking about a political process. Everybody is now talking about humanitarian aid being delivered, about a cessation of violence and everybody on the United Nations Security Council of course is supporting the work of Kofi Annan. So there are now many common elements, but the task of bringing them together in a resolution remains.”

U.N. officials estimate that 7,500 people have died in the year-long violence.

#Syria Kofi Annan: is he the right trouble shooter for Syria?

Few diplomats in the international arena have as much experience in dealing with dictators as Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian statesman appointed as special envoy to Syria by the United Nations and the Arab League.

Admired for his mild-mannered single mindedness, the softly-spoken diplomat has, against expectations, achieved results when the more heavy-handed tactics of western politicians have failed Photo: GETTY

By By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent

2:28PM GMT 24 Feb 2012

The UN’s former secretary general has undertaken a series of sensitive missions over the years, notably negotiating with both Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, two of the world’s most prominent anti-western strongmen of recent decades.

His Syria brief, however, is likely to prove the most challenging of his career, with President Bashar al-Assad so far proving impervious to all international criticism in his remorseless attempts to suppress the 11-month uprising against his rule.

Mr Annan’s record is mixed. Admired for his mild-mannered single mindedness, the softly-spoken diplomat has, against expectations, achieved results when the more heavy-handed tactics of western politicians have failed.

In 2008, he persuaded Saddam to re-admit UN weapons inspectors shortly expelled by the Iraqi leader in a fit of pique. Four years earlier, he persuaded President Bashir to rein in his Janjaweed militiamen who had carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

But in both cases, the breakthroughs proved ephemeral. Saddam once again ejected the inspectors, leading to US and British air strikes against Iraq within weeks, while Bashir swiftly resumed his offensive in Darfur, earning him an indictment on war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court.

Critics accused Mr Annan of being naive, seeing his conviction that even the most obstinate dictator could be moved by persuasion alone as foolhardy. They argued that, far from improving the situation, the Ghanaian had allowed himself to be outfoxed by dictators whose sole intention was to buy time.

Some will fear that Mr Assad will do the same, pretending to be amenable to the new envoy’s advances in order to buy diplomatic cover for continued repression.

A two-term secretary-general who stepped down in 2006, Mr Annan’s career at the helm of the UN was bookended by arguably his greatest disaster and his greatest triumph.

In 2004, as head of UN peacekeeping operations, he was accused of ignoring repeated warnings from Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian general commanding peacekeeping forces in Kigali, that massacres were being planned against Rwanda’s Tutsi population. Pleas for reinforcement were also ignored, both by Mr Annan and the UN Security Council.

Over the course of 100 days, more than 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in the swiftest genocide of modern history. It was the biggest blot on his reputation and Mr Annan has spent the rest of his career trying to atone for it.

“I believed at that time that I was doing my best,” he said 10 years later. “But I realised after the genocide that there was more that I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support.”

In early 2008, he won partial redemption after successfully brokering an end to a bloody outbreak of violence in Kenya following a disputed election. Within the space of 10 days, more than 1,000 people had been killed in politically-motivated tribal clashes, leading to many to believe that Kenya, once seen as one of Africa’s most stable states, was doomed to repeat the experiences of Rwanda.

But Mr Annas persuaded Mwai Kibaki, the Kenyan president, and Raila Odinga, the opposition leader widely believed to have been robbed of election victory by government-sponsored rigging, to share power and end the violence. He was hailed as a hero by many Kenyans as a result.

Mr Annan, however, commanded a degree of respect in Africa that he lacks in the Middle East. Although many Arabs commended him for opposing the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is likely to have much less influence in the region than he enjoys on the continent of his birth.

Mr Annan’s appointment was widely praised on Friday, with Kenneth Roth, the director of Human Rights Watch, calling him a “real pro”. But with the international community divided, and Mr Assad continuing to enjoy the support of Russia and China, there seems little chance of the Syrian leader heeding the new envoy unless he comes with more than just skilled words.

Russia proposes UN send special envoy to #Syria to coordinate humanitarian assistance

By Associated Press, Published: February 21

MOSCOW — Russia on Tuesday urged the United Nations to send a special envoy to Syria to help coordinate security issues and the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Twitter Tuesday that it’s proposing that the U.N. Security Council ask the U.N. Secretary General to send the envoy.

On Monday Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the world body should help solve humanitarian issues in Syria, after Damascus allowed the Red Cross to bring humanitarian aid to some regions.

Russia and China have vetoed two Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict and condemning President Bashar Assad’s crackdown on protests that killed 5,400 in 2011 alone, according to the U.N. Hundreds more have been killed since, activist groups say.

Syria is Russia’s last remaining ally in the Middle East. Moscow has maintained close ties with Damascus since the Cold War, when Syria was led by the current leader’s father, Hafez Assad.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Tuesday that Moscow will not attend the planned “friends of Syria” meeting at the end of this week, because its organizers had failed to invite representatives of the Syrian government.

Lukashevich said the meeting in Tunisia wouldn’t help a dialogue, saying that the global community should act as friends of the entire Syrian people, and not just one part.

“It looks like an attempt to forge some kind of international coalition like it was with the setting-up of a ‘contact group’ for Libya,” Lukashevich said.

Russia has said it will block any U.N. resolution that could pave the way for a replay of what happened in Libya. In that case, Russia abstained from a vote, which cleared the way for months of NATO air force attacks that helped Libyans end Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

Russia Says Syria’s Assad Hasn’t Responded to Peace Efforts #Syria

By Henry Meyer - Jan 24, 2012 6:49 AM GMT

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hasn’t responded to efforts to promote a peaceful solution to 10-month-old unrest, said a Kremlin envoy, Mikhail Margelov.

Russia is losing confidence in the possibility of a negotiated outcome in Syria, “because we don’t see any willingness, either from the authorities or the protesters, to reach an agreement,” Margelov said today in a phone interview.

Russia in October blocked a bid by the European Union and U.S. for the United Nations Security Council to condemn the crackdown in Syria, arguing that Assad was seeking to implement political changes.

Margelov, a special envoy who traveled to Libya last year in a bid to negotiate Muammar Qaddafi’s departure and has offered to mediate between the Syrian government and opposition, said Russia hasn’t received a “clear, positive response” from Assad.

Syria yesterday rejected a proposal from the Arab League to form a national unity government within two months to implement a peaceful transfer of power as a violation to its sovereignty.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in the Syrian crackdown on opposition unrest since March 2011, according to the UN. The U.S. has criticized Russia for blocking sanctions against Syria and supplying weaponry to its Soviet-era ally. Syria received a shipment of Russian ammunition this month and has also signed a $550 million deal for 26 Yak-130 jet trainer aircraft, according to the Kommersant newspaper.

German UN envoy slams Russia over Syria inaction

WASHINGTON: Germany on Wednesday accused Russia of preventing the UN Security Council from taking decisive action over the deadly crackdown on anti-regime protests in Syria.

Germany’s UN envoy Peter Wittig said the 15-member council “did not live up to its responsibilities” in face of Russian opposition to a European-drafted resolution that would have threatened Damascus with “targeted measures.”

“I think it was a decision taken in Moscow. It was a very deliberate decision” to back the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Wittig said at an event in Washington.

The German envoy strongly criticized Russia for linking the debate on Syria to the NATO attacks in Libya. Moscow argues that NATO and its partners overstepped an UN resolution passed in March last year that authorized military force to stop ousted Libyan strongman Moamer Kadhafi’s assault on civilians.

“I sometimes have a feeling it is a pretext for not engaging in a more constructive manner on Syria,” Wittig told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “I don’t think the cases can be compared.”

Wittig deplored the ongoing violence in Syria, denouncing the “ruthless repression of the freedom movement.” The situation in Syria “was and still is of utmost concern,” he said.

According to the UN, 5,400 people have been killed since protests erupted in March. The UN Security Council is struggling to agree a common position on Damascus’s crackdown on the dissent.

Russia and China vetoed a European-drafted resolution on Syria in October. Russia has since proposed its own resolution, which condemns the government and opposition violence, but Western council members have rejected it as too weak.

Nawaf Fares

Analysis

Chapter 7 of UN Charter

By ANNE BARNARD and RICK GLADSTONE

Published: April 5, 2012

Few diplomats in the international arena have as much experience in dealing with dictators as Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian statesman appointed as special envoy to Syria by the United Nations and the Arab League.

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