Syria envoy meets Assad, says conflict is global threat
Sat Sep 15, 2012 6:54pm GMT
By Dominic Evans
BEIRUT (Reuters) - International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said after talks
with Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Saturday that the escalating
conflict in the country posed a global threat.
Activists say 27,000 people have been killed in the 18-month-old uprising
against Assad. Late on Saturday, 20 bodies, including a woman's, were found
by residents in a district of Damascus that had been overrun by Assad's
troops, a watchdog said.
"This crisis is deteriorating and represents a danger to the Syrian people,
to the region, and to the whole world," Brahimi told reporters in Damascus
after speaking with Assad for an hour at the presidential palace.
It was the veteran Algerian diplomat's first meeting with the Syrian leader
since he replaced Kofi Annan as mediator two weeks ago, taking on a mission
that he described as "nearly impossible".
The revolt started as a mainly peaceful street campaign for reform but has
become a bloody insurgency that is deepening sectarian rifts in the Middle
East. Activists say 160 people, mostly civilians, were killed on Friday.
Assad's forces and the out-gunned but increasingly effective rebel fighters
seeking his overthrow have ignored appeals to end the conflict, which
continues to affect most of Syria's main cities, including Damascus, Aleppo,
Homs and Deir al-Zor.
"Ten men and a woman were found in a house in Tadamon," said Rami
Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "Another nine
were found in a separate building and all had gunshots to the body," he
added, quoting residents.
Over the past two days, the army have been conducting street to street raids
of Tadamon after days of government artillery strikes and helicopter attacks
aimed at killing rebel fighters.
Damascus residents reported hearing heavy overnight bombardment followed by
the sound of jet planes swooping over the capital shortly after 7 a.m. (0400
GMT) on Saturday.
One resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said black smoke was rising
from the southern Damascus neighbourhood of Hajar al-Aswad, which neighbours
Tadamon, on Saturday afternoon.
"There is very strong shelling to the south of Damascus. The roads have been
closed and there are tanks," the resident said.
The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Gulf Arab states and
neighbouring Turkey in their struggle to topple Assad, whose minority
Alawite faith is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Shi'ite Iran has been Assad's
staunchest ally.
"It's not a secret that the gap between the parties is very wide," Brahimi
said, adding that he still believed there was "common ground" for them to
resolve the crisis.
BENEDICT'S APPEAL
Louay Hussein, a prominent Syrian opposition activist in Damascus who met
Brahimi, said the mediator "knew the map of the crisis ... (and was)
optimistic".
Assad allows a few opposition figures to operate in the country but they
have little influence over the opposition in exile and the armed revolt.
Syrian authorities say they are fighting Islamist "terrorists" and accuse
regional Sunni Muslim powers of worsening the bloodshed by helping arm the
president's foes.
State news agency SANA quoted Assad as telling Brahimi that the success of
his mission hinged on "pressuring countries which finance and train the
terrorists, and which traffic weapons to Syria, to stop these actions".
His comments came a day after Pope Benedict, starting a three-day visit to
neighbouring Lebanon, branded the flow of arms into Syria a "grave sin" and
called for a halt to it.
World powers are deadlocked in the U.N. Security Council along Cold War
lines, with the United States and its NATO allies supporting the call for
Assad to quit and Russia and China defending him against what they see as
outside meddling.
Moscow and Beijing have three times blocked Western-backed attempts in the
Security Council to criticise Damascus and threaten sanctions against it.
"I believe that the president realises more than me the dimensions and the
danger of this crisis," said Brahimi, who has met Russian, Chinese and
Iranian diplomats in Damascus.
The mediator said Assad and his officials had pledged to support his work,
adding that he would return to the region soon after talks in New York with
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes; editing by Andrew Roche)
C Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved
------------[ Sent via the dehai-wn mailing list by dehai.org]--------------
Received on Sat Sep 15 2012 - 17:20:33 EDT
