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Obama calls on Syria's Assad to resign
Updated 1m ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Obama said the time has come for Syrian President Bashar Assad to resign for the sake of his brutally repressed people.
- http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2...-PRA8FOG-x.jpgAFP/Getty Images
Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
AFP/Getty Images
Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) shows embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
In a stinging written statement, Obama said Thursday that Assad has overseen a vicious onslaught of his people as they protest for freedoms. He said the Syrian people will decide their country's future but Assad is standing in their way and must go.
Obama said Assad's calls for reform ring hollow while he is "imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering his own people."
This was Obama's first explicit call for Assad to step down. His administration was also slapping new sanctions on Syria.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed the language in an on-camera appearance.
Until now, the administration had said Assad had lost all credibility to rule with his ruthless crackdown on pro-reform demonstrators.
Although U.S. officials acknowledged the move is not likely to have any immediate impact on the Syrian regime's behavior, they said it would send a powerful signal that Assad is no longer welcome in the international community. And they noted that the additional sanctions would further boost pressure on Assad and his inner circle.
As Syrian protesters have called for an end to his regime, Assad has unleashed tanks and ground troops in an attempt to retake control in rebellious areas. The military assault has escalated dramatically since the start of the holy month of Ramadan in August, with Assad's forces killing hundreds and detaining thousands.
Thursday's new formulation of policy will make it clear that Assad can no longer be a credible reformist and has to leave, the officials said.
The administration had planned to make the announcement last week but postponed it largely at the request of Syria's neighbor Turkey, which asked for more time to try to convince Assad to reform, and because Clinton and other officials argued it was important to build a global consensus that Assad must go. Clinton on Tuesday publicly questioned the effectiveness of the United States acting alone.
"It is not going to be any news if the United States says Assad needs to go," she said. "OK, fine, what's next? If other people say it, if Turkey says it, if (Saudi) King Abdullah says it, there is no way the Assad regime can ignore it."
Since then, however, the coordination strategy appears to have born fruit.
Ahead of the U.S. announcement, a high-level U.N. human rights team in Geneva said Thursday that Syria's crackdown "may amount to crimes against humanity" and should be referred to the International Criminal Court. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is expected on Thursday afternoon to urge the U.N. Security Council to make that referral
The investigators say they found "a pattern of human rights violations that constitutes widespread or systematic attacks against the civilian population." In their report, they said they had compiled a confidential list of 50 alleged perpetrators at "various levels" of Assad's government. Syria insists it is rooting out terrorists but rights groups accuse Syrian troops of killing more than 1,800 civilians since mid-March.
Jordan's foreign minister said Thursday that his country is "angered" and "extremely worried" by the killings of civilians in Syria and Switzerland recalled its ambassador. A day earlier, Tunisia recalled its ambassador from Syria, following the lead of several other Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia, that the U.S. has been lobbying to show displeasure with Assad.
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday has compared Assad to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi for refusing to heed calls to change. Turkey has joined calls for Gadhafi to leave power and Erdogan said Wednesday he had personally spoken to Assad and sent his foreign minister to Damascus, but "despite all of this, they are continuing to strike civilians."
In New York on Wednesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke to Assad demanding the immediate end of all military operations and mass arrests. In response, Assad said military and police operations had stopped, according to a U.N. statement said.
But the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which documents anti-regime protests, said Thursday that Syrian troops had shot dead nine people in the central city of Homs on Wednesday night. Another rights group said Assad's crackdown also killed nine people elsewhere in Syria on Wednesday.
Syria Kills 25 as UN Officials Consider Legality of Crackdown
By Massoud A. Derhally and Flavia Krause-Jackson - Aug 18, 2011 5:46 AM MT
Enlarge image http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/data?p...d=ik1A1mSlzzgo
Syrian soldiers sitting atop a tank reading in Arabic "The soldiers of Assad" leave the eastern city of Deir al-Zour following a 10-day military operation. Photographer: -/AFP/Getty Images
Syrian security forces killed at least 25 protesters yesterday, activists said, as UN officials prepared to advise the Security Council that President Bashar al-Assad’s five-month crackdown has violated international law.
At least 15 people were killed in the central governorate of Homs, eight in the port city of Latakia and the eastern town of Deir al-Zour, and one in each of the provinces of Hama and Idlib, Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights and Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said today. Protesters held evening rallies in Aleppo, Hama and suburbs of the capital, Damascus, they said.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay is ready to tell the Security Council today that there is evidence the government’s deadly suppression of dissent has violated international law, according to a UN diplomat briefed on the findings who wasn’t authorized to discuss them publicly. The UN has withdrawn non-essential staff from Syria, the office of its Special Coordinator for Lebanon said yesterday.
The UN report, amid growing international outrage, may add momentum to a European-led push to overcome Russian resistance to firmer UN action against Assad. Faced with the most serious threat to his family’s 40-year rule, he has deployed tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and helicopters to crush the uprising that began after revolts ousted the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, and sparked a conflict in Libya.
The International Criminal Court, which tries those charged with war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, issued an arrest warrant for Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi in June.
Says Operations ‘Stopped’
Assad told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a phone conversation yesterday that military operations against protesters had “stopped,” said Farhan Haq, a UN spokesman.
Syrian forces have killed more than 2,400 people since the unrest began in March, according to Merhi and Qurabi. More than 500 members of the security forces have died during that time, the government has said. The U.S. State Department said more than 30,000 people have been detained, some in cages.
“So long as the Syrian army and security forces remain loyal, it will be difficult to topple Assad,” said Patrick Seale, a biographer of Bashar’s late father, former President Hafez al-Assad. “His main asset is that no foreign country has any appetite for a military intervention and the Russians and the Chinese will certainly veto any attempt to condemn him at the UN Security Council.”
Possible U.S. Demand
U.S. President Barack Obama is close to asking Assad to leave office, a demand that would come more than a month after the administration said Assad had lost legitimacy, a U.S. official said last week. The official asked not to be identified because the timing of an announcement was still being discussed.
Switzerland’s Foreign Ministry said the violent actions of the Syrian security forces against civilians are “not acceptable” and that it is recalling its ambassador from Damascus for consultations.
“Switzerland cannot tolerate the systematic human-rights violations perpetrated by the Syrian security forces against the civilian population,” the ministry said today.
Assad Isolated
Criticism by nations in the region has left Assad increasingly isolated, leaving Iran as his only unwavering ally among them. Obama, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and British Prime Minister David Cameron have called on Syria to stop attacking its people. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Aug. 12 urged nations doing business with Syria to cut off trade and arms sales. Canada is extending sanctions against Assad’s government.
The foreign minister of neighboring Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu, said on Aug. 15 that the “time for words will be over” unless Syria ends military operations against its people.
The Syrian government, which has blocked access to aid workers and journalists, may allow a UN team to enter Syria to assess the humanitarian situation, said the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, Valerie Amos.
“We hope that we are very nearly at the point where a mission will be able to go,” she said yesterday in New York.
To contact the reporters on this story: Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut, Lebanon, at mderhally@bloomberg.net; Flavia Krause-Jackson in New York at fjackson@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden@bloomberg.net; Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net.
Syria intimidating expats abroad, threatening relatives back home
Published August 18th, 2011 - 15:23 GMT via SyndiGate.info
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Intimidation of expat 'dissident' Syrians by home regimes is not something unique to Assad's cronies: the 1980s witnessed Gaddafi-stamped political assassinations.
Enlarge Image
Syrian diplomats are intimidating expatriates who speak out against the regime, and reporting back home where dissidents’ relatives are then threatened and arrested, according to Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal, as the Syrian troops continued their violent crackdown on protesters.
The Obama administration told the Journal it had “credible” evidence that the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad is using the reports from its embassies abroad to target relatives of those living overseas, particularly Syrian-Americans who have joined peaceful US protests.
The daily, citing interviews with six Syrian-Americans, said embassy staffers were tracking and photographing protesters, and that Syrian diplomats including the ambassador to Washington have gone to Arab Diaspora communities to brand dissidents as “traitors.”
“They want to intimidate us wherever we are,” Philadelphia-based Syrian-American scientist Hazem Hallak told the daily.
Mr. Hallak said his brother Sakher was tortured and killed in May by Syrian intelligence after he returned from a conference in the United States. Mr. Hallak said agents in the Syrian city of Allepo sought to obtain a list of activists and US officials that Sakher had allegedly met during his US stay, and that Syrian agents tracked his brother in the United States.
He said his brother was not involved in anti-regime activities.
The Journal, citing three people interviewed by the FBI in recent weeks, also said the Federal Bureau of Investigation was probing allegations that Syrian Ambassador Imad Mustapha and embassy staff have threatened Syrian-Americans.
The US State Department publicly rebuked Mr. Mustapha last month after reports that embassy staff were “conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States.”
On Tuesday in an interview with the Journal, Mr. Mustapha dismissed the allegations by Syrian-Americans and US officials as “slander and sheer lies,” and that “the Embassy of Syria challenges the State Department to provide a single shred of evidence that the embassy has harassed or conducted surveillance on anyone.”
The paper cited several incidents of intimidation by Syrian officials against dissidents in the United States, as well as in Europe and Latin America.
Rights groups say the ongoing crackdown in Syria has killed 1,827 civilians since mid-March, while 416 security forces have also died, according to AFP.
Violent crackdown
While no sanctions are announced, while there are no orders or directions from the government, we are obliged to fulfill our contractual obligations, which we are now doing
Anatoly Isaikin, Rosoboronexport
Hundreds of Syrian security services raided homes in the port city of Latakia on Wednesday, pressing their crackdown on dissent in defiance of rising condemnation abroad, activists said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, contacted from Nicosia, said more than 700 members of the security services took part in the operation in the southern district of Al Raml, arresting people on lists.
“Heavy gunfire continued in most opposition neighborhoods” overnight, the Britain-based group said, according to AFP.
On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague stepped up the pressure and warned that President Assad was “fast losing the last shreds of his legitimacy.”
And US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Arab heavyweight Saudi Arabia and Syria's neighbour Turkey to push Assad to step down.
But the head of Russia’s arms export agency, cited by the Interfax news agency, said Wednesday Moscow was continuing to supply weapons to its traditional ally Damascus.
“While no sanctions are announced, while there are no orders or directions from the government, we are obliged to fulfill our contractual obligations, which we are now doing,” Rosoboronexport chief Anatoly Isaikin said.
"Crime against humanity"
Syrian tanks fired on low-income Sunni Muslim districts in the port city of Latakia on Tuesday, the fourth day of an assault which has killed 36 people and forced thousands of Palestinian refugees to flee, activists said.
A senior Palestinian official described the military offensive in the city as “a crime against humanity,” adding to Arab condemnation of President Assad’s crackdown on popular demonstrations calling for his overthrow, according to Reuters.
After five months of unrest, Mr. Assad, from Syria’s minority Alawite community, has broadened and intensified the military assault against main urban centers of protest since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on August 1.
The Local Coordination Committees said President Assad’s forces killed at least two people in Latakia, including 13-year-old Mohammed Shohan, hit by sniper fire in the Raml Al Filistini slum district, bringing the death toll to 36 in four days.
The activists’ group said the death toll was probably higher, but roadblocks and disrupted communications made it hard to gather information on casualties in the stricken city.
Syria has expelled most independent media since the unrest began, making it difficult to verify reports from the country.
Attack on Al Raml
A security official cited by Syria's official state news agency said security forces backed by an army unit had completed a mission in Latakia’s Al Raml neighborhood against “armed terrorist groups who have terrorized the citizens.”
A Latakia resident, a university student who did not want to be named, said tank machinegun fire could still be heard in the neighborhood and that tanks and armored vehicles moved deeper into the city, including the main Port Said street.
“We can only hear the tank fire. Anyone who goes near Al Raml Al Filistini risks being arrested or shot,” he said, according to Reuters.
The United Nations agency which cares for Palestinian refugees said on Monday four had been killed and 17 wounded.
Syrian forces killed a 16-year-old boy when they fired on a protest in the eastern city of Deir Al Zor, residents said, hours after the authorities said the army was pulling out.
Nibras Al Sayyah was hit by bullets fired by military intelligence personnel to disperse hundreds of people who marched at night after Ramadan prayers, the residents said.
Witnesses said most tanks and troop carriers had pulled out of Deir Al Zor, which they attacked on August 7, and moved to the outskirts. Many troops remained in the city and were storming houses looking for wanted dissidents, they said.
“The regime seems intent on breaking the bones of the uprising across the country this week, but the people are not backing down. Demonstrations in Deir Al Zor are regaining momentum,” one activist in the city said.
Apart from Deir Al Zor and Latakia, Syrian forces have already stormed Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre by the military under Mr. Assad’s father, the southern city of Deraa and several northwestern towns in a province bordering Turkey.
Syrian authorities blame others for the violence, saying anti-government forces have killed 500 soldiers and police. Rights groups say at least 1,700 civilians have been killed by security forces since protests erupted in March.
Mr. Assad has been repeatedly told by the United States, European Union and Turkey to halt the bloodshed but said last week his army would “not relent in pursuing terrorist groups.”
The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council will hold an emergency session next week to decry Syria’s military crackdown after enough states backed the initiative, diplomats said, according to Reuters.
RAW DATA: Background on Syria's Crackdown
Published August 18, 2011
| FoxNews.com
Over the last six months, some 1,800 to 2,000 protesters have been killed by the government, more than 12,000 arrested, and tens of thousands have fled as refugees.
Bashar Assad
• Bashar al-Assad, 45, came to power in 2000 after the death of his father who ruled Syria for 30 years.
• President Assad's Syria has near-complete control of the media, while internet and cell phone access has been repeatedly shut down during the chaos.
• In speeches, Assad has accused protesters of causing civilian deaths, arguing "saboteurs" are leading a conspiracy against the Syrian people.
• Assad's security forces have used kidnappings, abductions, and torture - including brutal death of a 13-year-old named Hamza - in an attempt to quell the protests that have included hundreds of thousands of Syrians.
• Aug 17: Assad told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on that military and police operations against protesters had stopped.
• Bashar has the power to change the country’s Constitution at will.
• Assad’s Baath Party has ruled Syria since 1963 with almost no dissent. It counts about 10 percent of Syrians (about 2 million people) as members.
Syria
• Nearly 20 percent of Syria is unemployed.
• About 55 of the population is 25 years and younger.
• In 2002, the "Axis of Evil" was expanded to include Syria.
• Syria has been designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism since Dec 29, 1979.
• Parliamentary Republic? Syria's executive branch holds the power to pick and choose what political parties can participate in the political process, effectively giving the Baath Party total control over parliament, this parliamentary republic is actually considered an authoritarian government.
• Oil Production: 401,000 bbl/day (2010).
Sources: Syrian National Human Rights Organization, U.S. Department of State, Council on Foreign Relations, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal.
18 August 2011 Last updated at 14:57 ET Share this page
6
Syria unrest: Why the world has waited so long
By James Robbins Diplomatic correspondent http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...444_de54-1.jpgCannot play media.You do not have the correct version of the flash player. Download the correct version
Hillary Clinton: "The transition to democracy in Syria has begun, and it is time for Assad to get out of the way"
Continue reading the main story Syria Crisis
- Deadlock as pressure builds
- Ramadan escalation fears
- UN Security Council statement
- 'Wait and see' for Syria protests
The pressure on Syria's Bashar al-Assad to step down is now intense: from the United States, from Europe, but also - perhaps more importantly - from his neighbours, including Turkey, and from his fellow Arabs, led by Saudi Arabia.
President Obama and European leaders have been widely criticised for being slow to cut Assad loose and to abandon him.
A large part of their defence until now has been that it is not moral to pledge support to protesters in any country when they face death at the hands of a dictator, unless you mean to back them decisively.
Politicians point to a deep sense of guilt about the encouragement from the West to the Kurds of Northern Iraq in 1990 and 1991 to rise up against Saddam Hussein after his invasion of Kuwait.
It was followed by failure to protect them when the Iraqi dictator wreaked his terrible vengeance.
Overwhelming force
The US and its allies still rule out any military intervention in Syria - even to protect civilians - but the new calculation in Washington and major European capitals is that the balance has now tipped against Assad's political survival.
Continue reading the main story US sanctions against Syria
- Syrian government assets frozen
- New investment banned
- Imports of Syrian petroleum banned
- Assets of 32 Syrian and Iranian individuals frozen and dealings with US citizens prohibited, including President Assad, his brother Maher and other government officials
Source: White House
The UN's head of human rights, Navi Pillay, has said the Syrian government may be guilty of crimes against humanity.
In a report, the commissioner said the UN Security Council should consider referring the case to the International Criminal Court.
Despite the growing pressure, there are no signs that President Assad is ready to resign.
He has few allies left - and reliance on Iran is unlikely to save him. That is not to say he will not still try to rely on overwhelming force.
It worked for his father before him - but the difference this time is that so few countries now judge that regional stability would be at grave risk if the Assad family finally lost power.
In fact, most governments now take the opposite view - that it is the Assad family which represents present danger.
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The Importance of President Obama’s Call to Assad
Syria, Foreign Policy, International Relations, Middle East, The Arab Spring and Middle East Unrest
Salman Shaikh, Director, Brookings Doha Center
The Brookings Institution
August 18, 2011 —
August 18, 2011, is shaping up to be a big day for the future of Syria. It started, for the first time, with large nighttime protests in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial and business center and its second largest city. These protests will undoubtedly breathe new life into a revolution that refuses to be killed, tortured or disappeared by the increasing use of violence of the Assad regime. Aleppo, like Daraa, Hama, Homs, Damascus and Deir Azzour in the east of the country, is demonstrating that it is the brave people of Syria that have driven Assad’s regime ever closer to its demise. Just over halfway through the holy month of Ramadan, it is the people of Syria who are making it a decisive month for the future of their country.
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Syrians living in Turkey protest against the government of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad after Friday prayers in Istanbul.
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Osman Orsal / Reuters
Recognizing the extraordinary will of the people of Syria, President Obama today finally said, “the time has come for President Assad has to step aside.” While it has come late, it is a significant moment for the U.S. and for this president in the Middle East. The president’s explicit call is a sharp break from the oscillating U.S. policy of containing the threats of the Syrian regime or engaging with it. For the first time in the forty-two years of the Baath regime in Syria, a U.S. president has told its leader, Bashar Al-Assad, the son of the first, ruthless Baathist dictator, Hafez Al-Assad, to get out of the way in favour of a peaceful transition to democracy in the country. This is a remarkable turn of events for President Obama who was so committed to engaging with Assad, and who at the start of the year dispatched the U.S.’s first ambassador since 2005 to Damascus.
The president’s call has already had a galvanizing impact on the efforts of the international community. In a coordinated move, the leaders of Europe, notably the “big 3”, Sarkozy, Cameron and Merkel also called today for Assad to step down. In addition, key Arab countries, notably, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have supported the holding of a special session of the United Nations Human Rights Council to discuss the situation in Syria next Monday. Later today, the chief of the Human Rights Council, Navi Pillay will brief the UN Security Council on the alleged human rights abuses being committed by the Assad regime against its own people. There are credible reports that she will call for up to fifty central figures in the regime to be referred to the International Criminal Court, some of them for allegedly committing crimes against humanity. Turkey’s National Security Council is also meeting later today to decide what action to take regarding its friend, Bashar Al-Assad. A Turkish decision to break from the regime would be a serious blow for Bashar and a vindication of the Obama Administration’s sustained and patient dialogue with Ankara.
After more than two thousand killed, well over 25,000 injured and thousands disappeared, today may be the day when we do see the genuine makings of a regional, Arab and international coalition that seeks to pressure and isolate the leadership in Damascus. A coalition which, as some of us have argued for some time, should make Assad and his regime the international pariahs their actions deserve.
President Obama’s call will also be an important morale boost to the protesting thousands in Syria. For the first time since the uprising in mid-March, the people of Syria know clearly and unambiguously where the U.S. stands. I will leave the last word to a friend in Aleppo who wrote an SMS message straight after the president spoke saying, “Thanks for Obama. It is a new point of our revolution. My friend I will invite you inshallah in Syria when we kick this dictator out.” He promised more protests in Aleppo tonight and a big day tomorrow, the third Friday in Ramadan.
Syria fires on protesters despite international pressure
A day after Obama called on Assad to step down, security forces fire on demonstrators. Activists say 12 are dead nationwide.
http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-08/64091548.jpg Protesters wearing masks in the color of the Syrian flag in the coastal city of Jableh call for President Bashar Assad to leave office in this screen grab from purported video footage of a demonstration on Friday. (August 19, 2011)
- http://www.latimes.com/media/thumbna...4-18180719.jpg Obama calls for Syrian leader to step down
- http://www.latimes.com/media/thumbna...759-187105.JPG Syria orders thousands into stadium in Latakia crackdown
- http://www.latimes.com/media/thumbna...7-14162101.jpg Syria forces use naval power against Latakia
By Borzou Daragahi and Alexandra Sandels Los Angeles Times August 19, 2011, 5:54 a.m.
Reporting from Beirut—
Large anti-government protests that erupted throughout Syria on Friday were met with gunfire a day after the United States and its allies stepped up international pressure on the regime of President Bashar Assad by calling upon him to step aside for grossly violating Syrians' human rights.
According to video footage posted to the Internet and witness accounts, large, boisterous and peaceful protests after Friday prayers erupted even in areas that have come under increasingly violent attacks in recent weeks, which have coincided with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
On a day dubbed "The promise of victory" by activists, protesters took to the streets in or near Homs and Hama as well as the suburbs of Damascus, though the protests did not appear to be as large as some Friday protests in recent weeks.
Security forces responded with gunfire, killing at least 12 nationwide, according to witnesses and activists, despite a pledge Assad reportedly made to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to stop deploying military power against protesters.
Syrian security forces and allied militias have killed more than 2,000 Syrians in a five-month campaign to crush a movement aiming to topple the Assad family's decades-old regime. A U.N. report published Thursday accused Syrian security forces of summarily executing detainees, opening fire with machine guns and helicopters against unarmed crowds of demonstrators and torturing detainees, including children.
It also alleged that soldiers who refused orders to kill were themselves executed. The case may be referred to the International Criminal Court in The Hague as early as next week.
In addition to calls Thursday by President Barack Obama and other Western leaders for Assad to leave office, Washington tightened sanctions on the regime and European leaders are discussing new economic measures, including a possible sanction on Syrian energy firms.
Switzerland and Tunisia, where the wave of uprisings against Arab autocrats began nine months ago, this week joined the list of countries recalling their ambassadors in Syria.
But neither Assad's promises nor the international pressure has curbed security forces' violent drive to crush a determined protest movement. In Dair Alzour, the far eastern Syrian city under siege for weeks, thousands of demonstrators in five or six districts and in outlying areas were confronted by plainclothes shabiha militiamen and army troops, who opened fire on them, according to an activist reached by phone.
"Before the launching of the demonstrations, there were more than 2,000 shabiha, security and army members," said the activist, who spoke on condition he not be named. "They started going toward demonstrations and fired at them, live gunfire."
An activist in Latakia, the northwestern coastal city under siege since last week, said parts of the city remained under a crushing lockdown by security forces rampaging through neighborhoods. "Electricity and water have been cut in the Ramel area," he said, asking that he not be identified by name.
"Security forces are breaking into houses and shops and stealing things. The situation is scary. There are armed militiamen on the streets in some areas in the city. Some are wearing black, some are wearing regular clothes."
According to the activist network Local Coordinating Committees, three soldiers were shot dead Friday when they refused to open fire on demonstrators in the Inkhel district of Dara, the province where the uprising began in March.
The activists also reported "many injuries" among protesters who were shot at in the streets of the second-largest city of Aleppo, where the anti-government movement appears to be gaining momentum.
The day's violence, the activist in Dair Alzour said, was expected, a consequence of the international attention. "They responded harshly because of the pressures," he said. "They're playing their last card. Now with this international action, they're ready to crush the demonstrations at any price."
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Britain compares Assad to Qaddafi
August 22, 2011 share
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must step down because he is as "irrelevant" to the future of his country as Moammar Qaddafi is in Libya, Britain's deputy prime minister said Monday.
With Qaddafi's regime apparently in its final throes as rebel fighters move into Tripoli, Nick Clegg said the situation in Syria was "less encouraging.”
Clegg dismissed a television interview Assad gave on Sunday and, in the strongest language used by a senior British minister on Syria yet, accused him of lying "endlessly" and said the president's family was fighting its own people.
"In Syria... a single family continues to wage war on an entire nation," Clegg said in a speech taking stock of the Arab Spring.
"Yesterday we heard him wheel out the same, well-worn promises of reform. We take no reassurance from that.”
"This is a man who has lied endlessly, broken his promises repeatedly, hurt his own people and now his time is up."
Clegg said: "We are clear: we want the violence to stop. Prisoners of conscience to be released. The UN to have complete freedom to assess the humanitarian situation. And, for the sake of the Syrian people, it's time for Assad to go.”
"He is as irrelevant to Syria's future as Qaddafi is to Libya's."
Assad on Sunday scoffed at Western calls to quit over his deadly crackdown on dissent, saying such calls were "worthless.”
The president's TV appearance was his first since US President Barack Obama called on him to stand down, a demand quickly echoed by the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Spain.
-AFP/NOW Lebanon
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=336477
Syria mobilizing troops for conflict with U.S., NATO
Sources: President Assad warned of international campaign if he doesn't step aside
Posted: August 21, 2011
5:49 pm Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WND
JERUSALEM – Syrian President Bashar Assad is taking military measures to prepare for a possible U.S.-NATO campaign against his regime, WND has learned.
While Assad struck a conciliatory tone in an interview today with his state-run television network, he also instructed the Syrian military to be prepared for an air or ground campaign if the international community determines his pledges of reform are not enough.
Last week, WND first reported Turkey secretly passed a message to Damascus that if it does not implement major democratic reforms, NATO may attack Assad's regime, according to Egyptian security officials.
The Egyptian security officials said the message was coordinated with NATO members, specifically with the U.S. and European Union.
Assad has been widely accused of ordering massacres on militants and protesters engaged in an insurgency targeting his regime.
The Egyptian officials said Turkish leaders, speaking for NATO, told Assad that he has until March to implement democratization that would allow free elections as well as major constitutional reforms.
This past Thursday, Obama officially asked Assad to step down to pave the way for a democratic system in Syria.
Today, Assad states he is "not worried" about the insurgency targeting his regime.
The Syrian president repeated plans to introduce reforms to Syria. He said a committee to study reforms would need at least six months to work.
That wasn't enough for a group of opposition leaders, who convened in Istanbul over the weekend in a bid to form a transitional "national council" to govern their country in a post-Bashar Assad era.
According to informed Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND, Assad asked his military to make specific preparations in the event of a U.S.-led NATO campaign similar to the military coalition now targeting Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi.
George Soros-funded doctrine with White House ties
The Libya bombings have been widely regarded as a test of a military doctrine called "Responsibility to Protect."
In his address to the nation in April explaining the NATO campaign in Libya, Obama cited the doctrine as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya.
Responsibility to Protect, or Responsibility to Act, as cited by Obama, is a set of principles, now backed by the United Nations, based on the idea that sovereignty is not a privilege but a responsibility that can be revoked if a country is accused of "war crimes," "genocide," "crimes against humanity" or "ethnic cleansing."
The term "war crimes" has at times been indiscriminately used by various United Nations-backed international bodies, including the International Criminal Court, or ICC, which applied it to Israeli anti-terror operations in the Gaza Strip. There has been fear the ICC could be used to prosecute U.S. troops who commit alleged "war crimes" overseas.
The Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect is the world's leading champion of the military doctrine.
As WND reported, billionaire activist George Soros is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Several of the doctrine's main founders also sit on boards with Soros.
WND reported the committee that devised the Responsibility to Protect doctrine included Arab League Secretary General Amre Moussa as well as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a staunch denier of the Holocaust who long served as the deputy of late Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.
Also the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy has a seat on the advisory board of the 2001 commission that originally founded Responsibility to Protect. The commission is called the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It invented the term "responsibility to protect" while defining its guidelines.
The Carr Center is a research center concerned with human rights located at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Samantha Power, the National Security Council special adviser to Obama on human rights, was Carr's founding executive director and headed the institute at the time it advised in the founding of Responsibility to Protect.
With Power's center on the advisory board, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty first defined the Responsibility to Protect doctrine.
Power reportedly heavily influenced Obama in consultations leading to the decision to bomb Libya.
Two of the global group's advisory board members, Ramesh Thakur and Gareth Evans, are the original founders of the doctrine, with the duo even coining the term "responsibility to protect."
As WND reported, Soros' Open Society Institute is a primary funder and key proponent of the Global Centre for Responsibility to Protect. Also, Thakur and Evans sit on multiple boards with Soros.
Soros' Open Society is one of only three nongovernmental funders of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Government sponsors include Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda and the U.K.
Board members of the group include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Ireland President Mary Robinson and South African activist Desmond Tutu. Robinson and Tutu have recently made solidarity visits to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as members of a group called The Elders, which includes former President Jimmy Carter.
Annan once famously stated, "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined – not least by the forces of globalization and international co-operation. States are ... instruments at the service of their peoples and not vice versa."
Soros: Right to 'penetrate nation-states'
Soros himself outlined the fundamentals of Responsibility to Protect in a 2004 Foreign Policy magazine article entitled "The People's Sovereignty: How a New Twist on an Old Idea Can Protect the World's Most Vulnerable Populations."
In the article Soros said, "True sovereignty belongs to the people, who in turn delegate it to their governments."
"If governments abuse the authority entrusted to them and citizens have no opportunity to correct such abuses, outside interference is justified," Soros wrote. "By specifying that sovereignty is based on the people, the international community can penetrate nation-states' borders to protect the rights of citizens.
"In particular," he continued, "the principle of the people's sovereignty can help solve two modern challenges: the obstacles to delivering aid effectively to sovereign states, and the obstacles to global collective action dealing with states experiencing internal conflict."
More George Soros ties
"Responsibility" founders Evans and Thakur served as co-chairmen with Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corp. Charitable Foundation, on the advisory board of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which invented the term "responsibility to protect."
In his capacity as co-chairman, Evans also played a pivotal role in initiating the fundamental shift from sovereignty as a right to "sovereignty as responsibility."
Evans presented Responsibility to Protect at the July 23, 2009, United Nations General Assembly, which was convened to consider the principle.
Thakur is a fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, which is in partnership with an economic institute founded by Soros.
Soros is on the executive board of the International Crisis Group, a "crisis management organization" for which Evans serves as president-emeritus.
WND previously reported how the group has been petitioning for the U.S. to normalize ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition in Egypt, where longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak was recently toppled.
Aside from Evans and Soros, the group includes on its board Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, as well as other personalities who champion dialogue with Hamas, a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
WND also reported the crisis group has petitioned for the Algerian government to cease "excessive" military activities against al-Qaida-linked groups and to allow organizations seeking to create an Islamic state to participate in the Algerian government.
Soros' own Open Society Institute has funded opposition groups across the Middle East and North Africa, including organizations involved in the current chaos.
'One World Order'
WND reported that doctrine founder Thakur recently advocated for a "global rebalancing" and "international redistribution" to create a "New World Order."
In a piece last March in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, "Toward a new world order," Thakur wrote, "Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution."
He was referring to a United Nations-brokered international climate treaty in which he argued, "Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions."
In the opinion piece, Thakur then discussed recent military engagements and how the financial crisis has impacted the U.S.
"The West's bullying approach to developing nations won't work anymore – global power is shifting to Asia," he wrote.
"A much-needed global moral rebalancing is in train," he added.
Thakur continued: "Westerners have lost their previous capacity to set standards and rules of behavior for the world. Unless they recognize this reality, there is little prospect of making significant progress in deadlocked international negotiations."
Thakur contended "the demonstration of the limits to U.S. and NATO power in Iraq and Afghanistan has left many less fearful of 'superior' Western power."
http://www.terra.net.lb/wp/Articles/...37&ChannelId=1
Nasrallah voices support for Assad, urges talks
August 27, 2011
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah threw his weight behind embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad Friday, calling on Arab and friendly states to combine efforts to end the nearly six-month-old unrest in Syria.
He also called for dialogue to reach a peaceful resolution for the worsening crisis between the Syrian government and pro-democracy protesters demanding regime change, and warned of negative fallout from the turmoil in Syria on the entire region.
“We all say and support the need for major and important reforms in Syria so that it can develop and become better as a result of its important position in the region. We want a Syria strong with reforms. This means that all those who claim they are friends of Syria and are keen on its unity must combine efforts to help calm the situation in Syria and push matters toward dialogue and a peaceful resolution,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech addressing a mass rally in the southern village of Maroun al-Ras near the border with Israel.
“Anything else is dangerous for Syria, Palestine and the region,” Nasrallah added, speaking through a giant screen via a video link.
Nasrallah’s speech was part of festivities held by Hezbollah throughout Lebanon this week to mark Quds Day, an annual Iranian-inspired event to show solidarity with Palestinians.
Maroun al-Ras was the scene of a May 15 shooting in which Israeli troops fired on thousands of Palestinian refugees marching toward the border with Israel, killing seven and wounding 111.
Nasrallah, whose party fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006, accused the West, notably the United States, of plotting to divide Syria in an attempt to create a new Middle East.
“There are some who want to push Syria toward partition in order to serve the new Middle East project which we destroyed in Lebanon and in Gaza [in December 2008] and in the 2006 July war,” he said.
He warned of the repercussions of instability in Syria on Lebanon and the entire region.
“Lebanon is not immune to any developments in Syria. Negative or positive developments will affect the entire region,” Nasrallah said, adding, “America and the West want concessions, not reforms from the Syrian leadership. A proof of this is that there are other countries in the region ruled by dictatorships but they still enjoy protection from America and France.”
The Hezbollah leader called for supporting Syria in the face of heavy regional and international pressures over the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Nasrallah also said reforms could not be carried out under street pressure. “We must stand with Syria so that it will not make concessions and to be able to carry out reforms in peace and confidence. No one can accept reforms under pressure. We know that the Syrian leadership is serious about reforms,” Nasrallah said.
The United Nations estimates that Syrian security forces have killed more than 2,200 people since a popular uprising calling for Assad’s ouster erupted in mid-March.
Nasrallah has been harshly criticized by the opposition March 14 parties for supporting the Syrian government against pro-democracy demonstrations.
Hezbollah had previously described the uprising in Syria as a foreign conspiracy, echoing the words of Assad who dismissed the anti-government protesters as “armed terrorist groups” seeking to destabilize the country.
Nasrallah praised Syria’s support for the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance. He noted that had it not been the support of the Syrian leadership, Hezbollah would not have succeeded in liberating south Lebanon from Israeli occupation in 2000.
“This land here [south Lebanon] would not have been liberated had it not been for the resistance, and the resistance would not have won if had it not been for Syrian support,” Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah said Lebanon was no longer the weakest country in the region as it used to be in the past. He said Lebanon is now strong and can stand up to Israel as a result of the tripartite equation: the army, the people and the resistance, adopted by the government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati and previous governments.
He said Israel can no longer attack Lebanon at will as it used to do in the past to escape from its domestic crises or problems with regional states. “Lebanon has become a trap for Israel,” he said.
“A strong Lebanon can protect its sovereignty and independence. It has the will to reject resettlement [of Palestinians]. Resettlement will not happen. Had Lebanon been weak, resettlement would have happened,” he said.
Nasrallah accused the United States and Israel of plotting with the assistance of some Lebanese groups whom he did not name to destroy the army, people and resistance formula as a service to Israel.
“I am not accusing anyone of collaboration, but you are serving Israel with or without your knowledge,” he said.
“Targeting the army and inciting opposition against it and calling on officers to revolt, in whose interest is this? Is it in the interest of Lebanon, Palestine and the resistance?” Nasrallah asked.
Future bloc MP Khaled Daher slammed the army and its commander Gen. Jean Kahwagi earlier this week when he accused the army intelligence of torturing, insulting and beating residents in north Lebanon, describing the acts as vengeance against Sunnis and Christians that support the March 14 coalition.
In his speech, Nasrallah praised the popular uprisings in Egypt and Libya which led to the overthrow of the two countries’ authoritarian leaders.
He said the disappearance of senior Shiite cleric Imam Musa Sadr in Libya on Aug. 31, 1978 was one of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s worst crimes. Nasrallah called on the Libyan rebels to uncover the fate of Sadr and his two companions who vanished with him in Libya.
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=235616
'Arab League to increase pressure on Syria'
By REUTERS
08/27/2011 15:45
CAIRO - Arab governments will step up pressure on Syria's President Bashar Assad at the Arab League on Saturday with a demand he end the bloody crackdown on protesters trying to remove him, a delegate to the League said ahead of the meeting.
The Syrian government has spent five months trying to crush street unrest using troops and tanks, killing at least 2,200 protesters according to the United Nations.
"There has been an agreement in talks held between the Arab states on ... pressuring the Syrian regime to completely stop the military operations and withdraw its forces," the delegate to the 22-member Arab League's council told Reuters.
"A clear message (will be sent) to the Syrian president that it has become unacceptable for the Arab states to stay silent on what is happening in Syria, especially following the Security Council's move to impose sanctions on Syrian officials and the condemnation from the United Nations Human Rights Council," said the delegate, who asked not to be named.
He said Arab foreign ministers would also discuss a proposal to send a ministerial delegation to Damascus to "directly inform the Syrian leader of the Arab position".
International condemnation of the repression escalated this month after Assad sent the army into several cities including Hama, Deir al-Zor and Latakia. Some Arab states have broken months of silence to call for an end to the violence.
It will be the first official Arab League meeting on Syria since the start of the uprising. The meeting was due to begin at 9 p.m. local time (1900 GMT)
The delegate said it was unlikely the Cairo-based body would suspend Syria's membership, as it did with Libya after the start of the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi in February.
In March, the League backed a UN Security Council resolution allowing NATO warplanes to patrol Libyan airspace and bomb Gaddafi's forces to protect civilians. Its approval was seen as necessary for that operation to go ahead.
Many Arab commentators have criticized the League for its timid reaction to the violence in Syria. It spent months only voicing "concern", suggesting divisions among its members, some of which are facing their own public protests.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah issued a rare condemnation of a powerful Arab neighbor on Aug. 8, demanding an end to the bloodshed and recalling his ambassador from Damascus.
Bahrain and Kuwait recalled their ambassadors hours after the Saudi king's decision and the Sunni Islam's most venerable institution of learning, al-Azhar in Cairo, called the Syrian assault on protesters an unacceptable "human tragedy."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...114429,00.html
Iran warns of regional crisis if Syria falls
Published: 08.27.11, 18:01 / Israel News
Syria's powerful ally Iran warned Saturday that a power vacuum in Damascus could spark an unprecedented regional crisis, as thousands of protesters insisted they will defy tanks and bullets until President Bashar Assad is toppled.
The 5-month-old uprising in Syria has left Assad with few international allies - with the vital exception of Iran, which the US and other nations say is helping drive the deadly crackdown on dissent. (AP)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-0...st-unrest.html
Russia Warns Assad Ouster May Trigger Collapse, Mideast Unrest
By Henry Meyer - Aug 23, 2011 6:16 AM GMT-0300
Efforts by the West to force regime change in Syria after intervening to oust Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi risk triggering the country’s collapse and further instability in the Middle East, a senior Russian official said.
“I would advise all countries thinking about Syria to keep in mind the negative example of Libya,” Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of the lower house of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, said in telephone interview in Moscow yesterday. “The risk of civil war there is even greater than in Libya, which would lead to the collapse of the country.”
Russia this week rejected demands from the U.S. and the European Union for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down because of his regime’s crackdown on five-month-old protests. Russia maintains its only military facility in the Middle East in Syria, a Soviet-era ally that is also a major buyer of Russian weapons.
The success of the rebels in Libya has implications for U.S. policy toward Syria, said Ben Rhodes, deputy U.S. national security adviser for strategic communications.
“It sends a message to Assad that the trends are against those who try to crack down and stifle change,” Rhodes said.
U.S. President Barack Obama, joined by the leaders of the U.K. France, Germany and Canada, on Aug. 18 called on Assad to step down.
Syria, which neighbors Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, is “one of the key countries in the region,” and its religious diversity makes the nation vulnerable to internal conflict, Kosachyov said.
Splinter and Fight
Anti-Qaddafi forces, which were backed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization air strikes, will probably splinter and fight among themselves once the current campaign is over, according to Kosachyov.
“I don’t want to be a prophet of ill tidings, but I fear Libya is facing serious unrest,” he said. “There are various political forces, which will probably end up in conflict. This is a more realistic outcome than a happy ending in which democracy replaces dictatorship.”
Russia, with power to veto United Nations Security Council resolutions, abstained from a March vote that authorized the air campaign by the U.S. and its allies and enabled rebel forces to halt an offensive by Qaddafi’s forces.
‘Crusade’
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, potential candidates in next year’s presidential election, clashed over the Libya campaign, with Medvedev saying it was “unacceptable for Putin to describe NATO’s involvement as a ‘‘crusade.’’
While later criticizing NATO for overstepping its mandate to protect civilians in Libya, Russia in May joined calls for Qaddafi’s departure.
That won’t help Russia keep billions of dollars in contracts it signed with Qaddafi’s regime, Aram Shegunts, head of the Arab-Russian Chamber of Industry in Moscow.
‘‘Russian companies will lose everything,” Shegunts said in a telephone interview today. “NATO countries spent billions of dollars on this campaign and they won’t give our companies a slice of the action.”
Russian weapons exporters may lose contracts worth $4 billion, Sergei Chemezov, head of state-owned Russian Technologies Corp., said March 3 after the UN imposed an arms embargo on Libya. Potential civilian contracts in Libya, including for the construction of a railroad network, are worth “billions of dollars,” Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said on March 22.
Energy companies such as state-run gas exporter OAO Gazprom and oil producer OAO Tatneft also have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in the country.
Navy Base
In Syria, Russia maintains a servicing point for visiting navy vessels in the port of Tartus, which was a permanent base for Soviet warships in the Mediterranean in the Cold War.
Russia has weapons contracts with Syria worth at least $3 billion, according to Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow based Center for the Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. The orders include Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles, MiG-29 fighter jets and Pantsir short-range air-defense systems.
Russia won’t halt weapons deliveries to Syria, Anatoly Isaikin, the head of arms exporter Rosoboronexport, said Aug. 17. The country has repeatedly rejected Western demands to impose sanctions on its Syrian ally.
The U.S., Britain and France are preparing to ask the UN Security Council this week to freeze the foreign financial assets of Syrian president Assad, a Western diplomat said yesterday. The measure would also bar foreign travel by the Syrian leader and call for an arms embargo on Syria, the diplomat said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Balazs Penz at bpenz@bloomberg.net
http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=235695
Turkish president: We have lost our confidence in Syria
By REUTERS
08/28/2011 12:33
ISTANBUL - Turkish President Abdullah Gul said he has lost confidence in Syria, and that the situation has reached a point where changes would be too little too late, Turkish state-run news agency Anatolian reported on Sunday.
Commenting on the situation in Turkey's neighbor, Gul told Anatolian in an interview: "We are really very sad. Incidents are said to be 'finished' and then another 17 people are dead. How many will it be today? Clearly we have reached a point where anything would be too little too late. We have lost our confidence."
Earlier on Sunday, Arab states told Syria to "resort to reason" and end months of bloodshed after some of the most intense protests in Damascus since the start of the uprising against President Bashar Assad.
Arab League foreign ministers also agreed to send Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby to Syria to push for political and economic reforms in the country ruled by Assad's family for 41 years.
The Arab League's move came as Syria's closest ally Iran also said Damascus must listen to the "legitimate demands" of its people, adding, however, that any change in Syria's ruling system or a power vacuum in Damascus would be dangerous for the region.
Overnight Saturday forces loyal to Assad fought gun battles near a northeast Damascus suburb with army defectors who had refused to shoot at a pro-democracy protest, residents said on Sunday.
Dozens of soldiers fled into an area of orchards and farmland after pro-Assad forces fired at a large crowd of demonstrators near the suburb of Harasta to prevent them from marching on the capital in defiance of an Interior Ministry order not to demonstrate in Damascus, they said.
"The army has been firing heavy machine guns throughout the night at al-Ghouta (old gardens surrounding Damascus) and they were being met with response from smaller rifles," a resident of Harasta told Reuters by phone.
Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied any army defections taking place. They have expelled independent media since the uprising against Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, erupted in Mach.
Activists have been reporting increasing defections among the rank-and-file army, mostly drawn from Syria's Sunni majority but dominated by an Alawite officer core effectively under the command of Assad's brother Maher.
The United Nations says 2,200 people have been killed since Assad sent in tanks and troops to crush the demonstrations that erupted in March after the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt were toppled by popular protests.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7...114875,00.html
Iran warns NATO against entering Syria
Published: 08.28.11, 17:01 / Israel News
Iran warned NATO on Sunday against any temptation to intervene in Syria, saying that rather than the defeating a regime it would be bogged down in a "quagmire" similar to Iraq or Afghanistan.
Syria's closest ally in the Middle East, Iran has in recent days tempered its strong support for President Bashar al-Assad with calls for him to respect the "legitimate demands" of his people. (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...77P12M20110828
Army fights defectors near Damascus: residents
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
AMMAN | Sun Aug 28, 2011 8:19am EDT
(Reuters) - Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fought gun battles overnight near a northeast Damascus suburb with army defectors who had refused to shoot at a pro-democracy protest, residents said on Sunday.
Five months into a popular uprising, Assad is under pressure from street protests, galvanized by the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, and from Arab foreign ministers who told Syria early on Sunday to work to end bloodshed "before it is too late".
The Arab League decided to send its Secretary-General to Damascus to push for reforms. Turkey's president said he had lost confidence in Syria.
Dozens of soldiers defected and fled into al-Ghouta, an area of orchards and farmland, after pro-Assad forces fired at a large crowd of demonstrators near the Damascus suburb of Harasta to prevent them from marching on the capital, residents said.
"The army has been firing heavy machineguns throughout the night at al-Ghouta and they were being met with response from smaller rifles," a resident of Harasta told Reuters by phone.
It was the first reported defection around the capital, where Assad's core forces are based.
OFFICIAL DENIAL
Syrian authorities have repeatedly denied any army defections have been taking place. They have expelled independent media since the uprising against Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, erupted in Mach.
Activists have been reporting increasing defections among the rank-and-file army, mostly drawn from Syria's Sunni majority but dominated by an Alawite officer core effectively under the command of Assad's brother Maher.
A statement published on the Internet by the Free Officers, a group that says it represents defectors, said "large defections" occurred in Harasta and security forces and shabbiha (militiamen) loyal to Assad were chasing the defectors in the direction of the gardens and districts inside Damascus.
The statement said that a colonel in Air Force Intelligence, who had been in charge of raids and arrests by the secret police, was hit by a bullet in his head in the nearby suburb of Saqba.
The escalation came after Syria's Interior Ministry warned Damascus residents on Saturday against demonstrating after some of the most intense protests in the capital since the start of the uprising against Assad.
President Abdullah Gul of Turkey, a former ally which has become increasingly critical of Syria, said the situation had reached a point where changes would be too little too late, Turkish state-run news agency Anatolian reported.
Gul told Anatolian in an interview: "We are really very sad. Incidents are said to be 'finished' and then another 17 people are dead. How many will it be today? Clearly we have reached a point where anything would be too little too late. We have lost our confidence."
Assad's closest ally, Shi'ite Iran, with which he has been strengthening ties to the disquiet of Syria's Sunni majority, said Damascus must listen to the "legitimate demands" of its people. But Tehran also said that any change in Syria's ruling system would be dangerous for the Middle East.
"RESORT TO REASON"
In Cairo, the Arab League said in a statement after an extraordinary meeting that it was concerned "over the dangerous developments on the Syrian arena that had caused thousands of casualties" and "stresses the importance of ending bloodshed and to resort to reason before it is too late".
It was the first official Arab League meeting on Syria since the start of the uprising, inspired by revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt that sparked unrest across the Middle East and North Africa. The foreign ministers said Syria's stability was crucial for the Arab world and the whole region.
The United Nations says 2,200 people have been killed since Assad sent in tanks and troops to crush months of street demonstrations calling for an end to his family's 41-year rule.
Syrian authorities have blamed armed "terrorist groups" for the bloodshed and say 500 police and army have been killed.
The latest demonstrations in Damascus were partly sparked by an attack on Saturday by Assad's forces on a popular cleric, Osama al-Rifai. He was treated with several stitches to his head after they stormed al-Rifai mosque complex in the Kfar Sousa district of the capital, home to the secret police headquarters, to prevent a protest from coming out of the mosque.
"Some of the 'amn' (security) went on the roof and began firing from their AK-47s to scare the crowd. Around 10 people were wounded, with two hit by bullets in the neck and chest," a cleric who lives in the area told Reuters by phone.
(Additional reporting by Sami Aboudi in Cairo; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
http://nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDet...#ixzz1WPQIcXFw
Turkey says it has lost confidence in the Syrian regime
August 28, 2011 share
Turkey has lost confidence in the Syrian regime as its deadly crackdown on protestors continues, the Anatolia news agency quoted President Abdullah Gul as saying on Sunday.
"Actually [the situation in Syria] reached a level that everything is too little, too late. We lost our confidence," Gul told Anatolia in an interview to mark his fourth year in office, referring to unfulfilled promises Syria's President Bashar al-Assad had made to halt the onslaught.
"Today in the world there is no place for authoritarian administrations, one-party rule, closed regimes. Those either will be replaced by force, or the governors of states will take the initiative to administer," Gul said.
"Everyone should know that we are with the Syrian people ... What is fundamental is the people," he said.
Ankara, whose ties with Damascus have flourished in recent years, has repeatedly called on Assad to initiate reforms but has stopped short of calling for his departure.
The Syrian regime has sought to crush weeks of protests with brutal force, killing more than 2,200 civilians and arresting at least 12,000 dissenters, rights activists say.
The latest bloodletting claimed two lives in Syria on Saturday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On Monday, UN leader Ban Ki-moon had said it was "troubling" that Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has repeatedly failed to keep promises including one to halt his military onslaught against the opposition.
-AFP/NOW Lebanon