13/08/2012

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos will go to Syria on Tuesday to discuss ways of increasing emergency aid to civilians, but fighting must ebb before there is any real hope of gaining access to hot spots, diplomats said on Monday.

During her three-day trip, Amos will also visit Lebanon to meet Syrian families who have fled the violence and hold talks on providing support to the growing number of refugees, a U.N. statement said.

The humanitarian situation in Syria has worsened in recent weeks as fighting spread to Damascus and Aleppo. “Two million people are now estimated to have been affected by the crisis and over one million have been internally displaced,” it said.

Amos’ schedule of meetings was not released, but the statement said that she would meet Syrian authorities, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and other aid agencies.

She went to Syria in March to seek unhindered access for aid workers to the worst-hit areas and secured an agreement from the government for a joint but limited assessment of the humanitarian situation.

But U.N. efforts to launch a major aid operation since then have been stymied by both bureaucracy and insecurity.

The escalation in the 17-month conflict between government forces and rebel fighters means there are few options for boosting relief operations unless the guns fall silent, diplomats said.

“As long as you have violence going on areas with the greatest needs, it becomes an access question. You can’t do it with bullets flying,” a Western diplomatic source told Reuters.

“Announcing someone has access is insignificant if the shells are still falling,” he said.

WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY

Despite growing needs, Syria has refused to grant visas to Western aid workers, a U.N. official said last month.

Growing insecurity forced the world body to withdraw some expatriate aid workers from Syria in late July.

The U.N. still deploys some 36 expatriates and 1,000 Syrian aid workers in the country, while a further 3,600 Syrians work for the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA.

“The distribution network is there. National staff are implementing the programme. We are mobile and whenever there is a window of opportunity, we will deliver assistance,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

U.N. agencies including the World Food Programme (WFP) have relied on the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to distribute its aid supplies, including food rations to 542,000 people in July - falling well short of the WFP target of 850,000.

Up to 3 million Syrians are likely to need food, crop and livestock aid in the next 12 months as the conflict has prevented farmers harvesting crops, the WFP and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said last week.

Many of the main drug makers in Syria have closed down, causing severe shortages of medicines for treating chronic diseases and a rising number of casualties, the World Health Organization (WHO) said a week ago.

Hospitals or health centres have stopped functioning due to a lack of staff or supplies, while others have been damaged or taken over by fighters, the U.N. agency said.

Nearly 150,000 Syrian refugees have registered in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey since the conflict began, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Russian president Vladimir Putin (left) greets UN envoy Kofi Annan at the start of a meeting concerning a peace plan for Syria at the Kremlin in Moscow yesterday. Clashes in Damascus between rebels and state forces raged for a third day, in the fiercest fighting to hit Syria’s seat of power since the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began 17 months ago.Photograph: Sergei Karpukhin

MICHAEL JANSEN

UN HUMANITARIAN chief Valerie Amos yesterday warned combatants involved in the Syrian conflict to avoid loss of civilian life or face prosecution for war crimes as fierce fighting continued for the third day in Damascus.

Baroness Amos observed: “As the International Committee of the Red Cross has now described the situation as an armed conflict, international humanitarian law applies across Syria in areas where there is fighting.”

Shooting was reported in the capital near the central bank in Seven Springs Square, often the site of pro-regime demonstrations, and at the headquarters of the ruling Baath party in the al-Mazra’ah area. Firing erupted on Baghdad Avenue, and rebels claim to have shot down one of the helicopters overhead.

The army was said to have deployed artillery against rebel strongholds in the capital’s outskirts where dissidents established a presence many months ago. The escalation followed the declaration on Monday night by the rebel Free Syrian Army of “Damascus Volcano”, an all-out offensive against government troops. Rebel spokesman Col Qassim Saadeddine announced, “The battle for Damascus has begun.” A diplomat in Damascus said this operation has started ahead of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan when anti-regime protesters can be expected to take to the streets.

This battle commenced on the southern edge of the capital and has spread to the northeast and centre. A main focus has been the Midan district, where troops have surrounded rebels and refuse to allow them to retreat to less densely populated areas. Shooting has been heard in Palestinian camps where rebels retreating from the besieged Tadamon quarter have sought refuge.

The rebels also announced they launched attacks on government troops in traditional hot spots Homs, Hama and Idlib, and threatened to block main internal and international routes. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, an influential component of the ex-patriate Syrian National Council, urged Syrians to seize “this historic moment” by giving support to the rebels. “Prepare to become soldiers in this decisive battle. You will secure victory with your own two hands,” stated the movement, outlawed in Syria since 1963.

The opening of the offensive has been timed to coincide with the UN Security Council’s consideration of a draft resolution, proposed by Britain, the US, France and Germany. It would extend the deployment of the UN monitoring mission in Syria for 45 days and place implementation of the peace plan proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan under chapter seven of the UN charter which authorises military action as well as sanctions if threats are posed to international peace and security.

Although the US says it favours sanctions not military action, Moscow distrusts Washington which used a similar resolution to lead Nato intervention in the Libyan conflict. During talks in Moscow with Mr Annan, Russian president Vladimir Putin pledged to “do everything” to support the Annan peace plan but would not back the western draft. Mr Annan, who warned the “crisis is in a key turning point”, said he hoped discussions would continue and send a message to Syria. Ahead of this encounter, Moscow declared its intention to veto the resolution. Russia has circulated its own draft extending the mandate of the monitors.

In spite of a last-minute appeal from UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, China is likely to support Russia in the vote, scheduled for today. China’s People’s Daily editorialised, “The life of Syria’s current political leadership can only be determined by the Syrian people.”

Joel Brinkley, © 2012 Joel Brinkley

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Louai Beshara / AFP/Getty Images

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos (R) meets with Syrian Minister of Health Wael Nader al-Halqi in Damascus, on March 8, 2012, during her two-day visit to urge the regime to allow aid into battered protest cities.

Sitting in his sumptuous palace, Syrian President Bashar Assad can almost certainly hear the drip, drip, drip, like a leaky faucet, of his life dribbling away.

The world is finally closing in on him, and he realizes that to remain alive, or at least a free man, he must continue killing his own people.

He knows that the minute he stops and withdraws his forces to their barracks, as almost the entire world is demanding, one of two things will happen: One of the rebel armies will capture and kill him, or Western forces will seize him and send him to The Hague to be tried for genocide.

That dripping sound is the incremental increase in pressure. It took great leaps in the last couple of weeks as Washington began at least talking about military action to stop the slaughter. That’s not likely to happen anytime soon, but President Obama did order the Pentagon to prepare a contingency battle plan. Still, every day the pressure increases. Washington now says it will offer the rebels nonlethal aid.

U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos briefly visited the battered Baba Amr neighborhood, the first outside official allowed in. Syrian troops first rounded up any militant stragglers and tried to clean up the place. It didn’t work. Amos reported shock and revulsion. “I was horrified,” she said.

Meantime, Canada closed its embassy in Damascus, the latest among dozens to leave. Air France ended air service there. Jordanians marched on the Syrian Embassy in Amman. China pulled its workers out of the state. Syria’s deputy oil minister defected, joined the opposition and warned other government officials to “abandon this sinking ship.”

Drip, drip, drip.

The Syrian uprising is now one year old, and by most estimates, nearly 9,000 people have been killed. Assad’s ruling Alawite sect is part of a small Shiite minority, while about 75 percent of the population, almost everyone he has killed, is Sunni. That makes Assad guilty of genocide, the systematic killing of another national, racial, political or ethnic group.

In fact, the Islamic world’s reaction to the carnage has broken down along ethnic lines. Hezbollah, the Shiite terror group in southern Lebanon, boisterously defends Assad and is sending fighters to help him. But Hamas, the Sunni terror group in Gaza, says it doesn’t want to get involved. Al Qaeda in Iraq, also a Sunni group, is sending fighters to Syria to fight alongside the rebels.

When Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, this month called for military action against Syria, that seemed to jar the world to take notice at last.

Obama called the indiscriminate artillery attack on Homs “heartbreaking and outrageous.” The United Nations and Arab League appointed former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as their special envoy to Syria. He met with Assad twice last weekend, trying to persuade him to stop “the killing and the misery,” he said. But he came away with nothing. In fact, during his fruitless visit, Assad’s forces killed more than 100 people.

Navi Pillay, the U.N.’s top human-rights official, said Assad was guilty of “unspeakable violations that take place every moment” and should be referred to the International Criminal Court.

And German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle declared, “The process of disintegration of the Assad regime has begun.”

The problem is, on the day Westerwelle spoke, Assad’s military killed 62 more. And the atrocities continue: wounded hospital patients tortured with whips and electric shocks; mass graves discovered outside Homs, one holding children whose throats had been slit.

Meantime, seven more Syrian military officers defected, bringing to 10 the number of generals who have left. Iraq, a Shiite-governed nation that had been a cautious Assad ally, announced that Syria is disinvited from an Arab League summit in Baghdad later this month. Japan announced new economic sanctions. On Monday, Turkey suspended bus service to Syria.

Drip, drip, drip.

But all of this amounts to little more than talk while the mass murder continues. No, the United States and Europe are not eager to start still another Middle East war. Nonetheless, they could do more.

What about a naval blockade so Russian merchant vessels can’t deliver more military supplies for Assad? (A Russian ship delivered a boatload of ammunition in January.)

How about creating protected humanitarian corridors for food and medical-supply deliveries to Assad’s victims? If the foreign forces threatened Assad, he probably wouldn’t interfere.

As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton put it: Yes, Assad’s days are numbered, but “I wish it could be sooner so that more lives could be saved.”

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. To comment, go to sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.

This article appeared on page E - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/16/IN481NK277.DTL#ixzz1pMksAmvK

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/16/IN481NK277.DTL#ixzz1pMkhsa5I

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos

9 March 2012 –

By Albert Aji, Beirut

Thursday, March 08, 2012

The UN humanitarian chief entered the shattered Syrian district of Baba Amr, where activists accuse regime forces of trying to cover up evidence of execution-style killings and reprisal attacks following a bloody military siege.

Valerie Amos was expected to give the first outside assessment of the conditions in the neighbourhood in the central city of Homs.

The government had sealed off Baba Amr since regime forces recaptured the neighbourhood from rebels last Thursday following a deadly assault that lasted nearly four weeks. Activists accuse the government of using the past six days to try to cover up evidence of atrocities by the regime.

Khaled Erq Sousi, head of the emergency committee of the Syrian Red Crescent, said that Amos was allowed into Baba Amr. The government had rebuffed an earlier request by Amos to visit the country this month as regime troops attacked Baba Amr, finally wresting it back from rebels who had held it for months.

Amos has said the aim of her visit is “to urge all sides to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies.”

Despite international appeals, the Syrian government still has not allowed any aid workers into Baba Amr, saying there was a security risk. But activists say the government has been engaged in a “mopping-up” operation to hide their activities.

After seizing Baba Amr from the rebels, regime forces appeared to be turning their attention to other rebellious areas, including the northern province of Idlib near Turkey. The shift suggested that the Syrian military is unable to launch large operations simultaneously, even though the security services remain largely strong and loyal.

According to witnesses, Syrian troops shelled the northern villages in Idlib yesterday.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad defies mounting international pressure to end the year-old crackdown on an uprising against him.

According to state news agency Sana, Assad said he will continue to confront “foreign-backed terrorism.” Since the uprising began last March, he has blamed armed gangs and foreign terrorists for the unrest, not protesters seeking change.

The UN says more than 7,500 people have been killed since Syria’s uprising began. Activists put the death toll at more than 8,000.

Despite the growing bloodshed, president Barack Obama has said unilateral US military action against Assad’s regime would be a mistake.

In Washington, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta pushed back against fresh demands for US military involvement in Syria to end Assad’s deadly crackdown on his people.

The panel’s top Republican, Sen John McCain of Arizona, said the estimated 7,500 dead and the bloodshed calls for US leadership that a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, displayed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s and that Obama eventually showed on Libya last year.

Watch video here.

Wednesday, 7th March 2012 13:31

A UN humanitarian chief and a Syrian Red Crescent team of aid workers have been allowed into the devastated Baba Amr district of Homs but most civilians had already fled.

It comes as an International Red Cross convoy was still unable to go there since arriving in the city last Friday - a day after rebel fighters left following nearly a month of shelling by government forces.

UN official Baroness Valerie Amos went to the district as part of a three-day mission to try to persuade Syrian authorities to grant full access to aid workers into the towns and cities affected by fighting so they can deliver life-saving assistance to civilians.

The International Red Cross said most Baba Amr residents had left for areas such as Abel that have already been visited by the organisation.

Their teams provided assistance to 450 families, about 2,700 people, in Abel during the day.

Baroness Amos has also held talks with foreign minister Walid Moualem in the capital Damascus.

He said she could visit anywhere in Syria, according to her spokeswoman, who added Ms Amos and her team had heard gunfire while they were in Baba Amr.

“She (Amos) said that security was obviously an issue, and they heard gunfire while they were there,” said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The parts of Baba Amr that they saw, she said they were pretty devastated.”

International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Sean Maguire confirmed the Syrian Red Crescent team had been allowed in to Baba Amr, but said the Red Cross had not entered the area.

Baroness Amos had been denied access to the country for more than a week. Her mission will end just as the new UN/Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan, arrives.

She says her aim is to “urge all sides to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies”.

The British Ambassador to Damascus, Simon Collis, said: “I hope her visit is the beginning of something, but I can’t help noticing that the regime always wants to haggle.”

Diplomatically, little is expected to happen until Mr Annan’s visit and even that will probably just be a series of preliminary meetings.

Recent attempts to put together a new UN Security Council resolution may be put on hold until he reports back to New York.

The Russians maintain that their position that there should be no outside interference in Syria has not changed and US President Barack Obama has repeated his stance that unilateral US military intervention would be a mistake.

The United States is considering direct assistance to Syria’s opposition forces, including technical and communications equipment, to help in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The US is against taking unilateral military action in Syria.

Instead it’s focused its efforts on pursuing diplomacy and sanctions to force President Assad to step down.

The US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has told a Senate Committee the US is considering direct assistance to Syria’s rebels.

“Plans are being made to provide an array of non-lethal assistance including technical assistance,” he said.

The Defence chief left open the possibility of military action saying while the Obama administration continues to assess the situation, a military plan is underway that’ll provide the President with some options.

Red Cross convoy enters Syrian suburb of Baba Amr

The UN humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, who is currently visiting Syria, has described the Baba Amr district in the city of Homs as devastated and devoid of people.

She visited the area with members of the Syrian Red Crescent.

The Red Cross was blocked from delivering aid to Baba Amr for the past five days.

Red Cross spokeswoman Carla Haddad says it’s a case of too little, too late.

“We kept saying we need to enter to assess things first hand,” she said.

“Now the fact that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered is important but then if no one is left, what the point.

“I mean the point was to help people when they needed it, and we think we’ve managed to do that outside of Baba Amr and we’ve been doing that for days. “

Anti-government activists say military tanks bombarded other opposition areas in Homs throughout the evening, although an ICRC spokesman in Damascus said the city was quieter than before.

In the latest of several accounts of killings and other abuses, local activist Mohammed al-Homsi said troops and militiamen in support of president Bashar al-Assad had stabbed to death seven males, including a 10-year-old, from one family on Tuesday.

“Their bodies were dumped in farmland next to Baba Amr,” he said.

Syrian media curbs make it hard to verify such reports.

ABC/wires

Rescued journalist tells of being abandoned in tunnel as China urges government and rebel to end all acts of violence

guardian.co.uk, Saturday 3 March 2012 22.09 GMT

Cemetery workers prepare graves for three Free Syrian Army fighters at Idlib in northern Syria. Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP

has called the violence in Syria “a crime against humanity” on the scale of the 1990s bloodshed in the Balkans, as a Red Cross convoy was once again barred from entering the Homs suburb of Baba Amr.

The comment by Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu follows similar remarks from the EU on Friday, which called for the documentation of war crimes in Syria.

“No government, no authority, under no circumstances, can endorse such a total massacre of its own people,” Davutoglu said. “The international community must speak louder. The lack of international consensus is giving Syria the courage to continue.”

The criticism came at the end of a week in which the UK and France closed their embassies in Syria, and China and Russia appeared to shift position in calling for President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to admit UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.

“The situation in the field seems to resemble Sarajevo or Srebrenica. This seems to be the way we are heading,” Davutoglu said at a joint news conference with Giulio Terzi, Italy’s foreign minister. “We believe that diplomatic pressure on the Assad regime must be increased. We say this not only from the point of view of the EU. We believe all international institutions must do this.”

China urged the government and the rebels to immediately end all acts of violence, especially against civilians. A foreign ministry statement urged both sides to “launch an inclusive political dialogue with no preconditions” under the mediation of former UN secretary- eneral Kofi Annan, the newly appointed UN-Arab League envoy on the Syria crisis, .

On Friday, current UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he had received “grisly reports” that Assad’s troops were executing, imprisoning and torturing people in Homs. Syrian forces continued to pound the battered city and authorities handed over the bodies of two journalists killed in Baba Amr last month – including Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times – to diplomats in Damascus.

Meanwhile, the wounded French journalist Edith Bouvier described for the first time how she feared her attempt to escape from Homs had ended inside a dark, three-kilometre tunnel that rebels were using to supply the besieged district of Baba Amr when the Syrian army bombarded its exit.

Bouvier was abandoned, taped to a stretcher with a broken leg, as rebels and dozens of wounded headed back to the neighbourhood. “One of them placed his Kalashnikov on me. He put his hand on my head and said a prayer. It wasn’t very reassuring. Then he left,” Bouvier told Le Figaro newspaper, for which she was working in Syria. “I didn’t know what was going to happen. Was the exit blocked? Were Syrian soldiers going to enter? I wanted to run away, before remembering that I was taped to a stretcher.” Bouvier and French photographer William Daniels, who stayed with her, were finally rescued by a rebel who drove down the tunnel on a motorbike.

Concern was mounting for civilians in freezing conditions in battered Baba Amr, where trucks from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were still blocked from entering. “The ICRC and Syrian Red Crescent are not yet in Baba Amr today. We are still in negotiations with authorities. It is important that we enter today,” ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said.

Anti-government activists said they feared troops were keeping out the ICRC to prevent aid workers witnessing a massacre. UN chief Ban blamed Damascus for the fate of civilians. “The brutal fighting has trapped civilians in their homes, without food, heat or electricity or medical care; without any chance of evacuating the wounded or burying the dead. People have been reduced to melting snow for drinking water. This atrocious assault is all the more appalling for having been waged by the government itself, systematically attacking its own people.”

Bashar Ja’afari, Syria’s UN ambassador, said Ban’s remarks included “extremely virulent rhetoric which confines itself to slandering a government based on reports, opinions or hearsay”.

Elsewhere in the country, Syrian state news agency Sana said a suicide car bomber in the town of Deraa, near the border with Jordan, had killed two people and wounded 20. Residents claimed seven people had been killed, and anti-Assad activists denied the attack was a suicide bombing. Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said anti-Assad fighters had earlier killed six soldiers and wounded nine in al-Herak.

16:59 23 FEB 2012

(AGI) New York - Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will be named as the UN special envoy to Syria. It was revealed by supranational diplomatic sources. The UN Under-Secretary-General for Human Affairs, Valerie Amos, will soon travel to Syria on a mission to assess the humanitarian situation in the Middle East country