1.
EGYPT SAYS SYRIA's "OPPRESSIVE REGIME" MUST GO
By Yeganeh Torbati and Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Reuters
August 30, 2012
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE8610SH20120830
DUBAI / AMMAN -- Egypt called on Thursday for intervention to halt bloodshed in Syria, telling a meeting of 120 nations it was their duty to stand against the "oppressive regime" of Bashar al-Assad, prompting a Syrian walkout.
President Mohamed Mursi, elected two months ago after a popular uprising toppled Egypt's long-standing leader Hosni Mubarak, said Assad had lost legitimacy in his fight to crush a 17-month-old revolt in which 20,000 people have been killed.
Mursi's scathing speech to a summit of non-aligned leaders, hosted by Assad's Shi'ite ally Iran, prompted Syria's foreign minister to accuse the moderate Sunni Islamist leader of inciting further bloodshed in Syria.
The political broadside against the Syrian president came as rebels said they shot down a fighter plane in northern Syria, where his air force has been bombarding opposition-held towns in a fierce counter-offensive against insurgents.
It was the latest strike by Assad's foes on the air power he has increasingly relied on to crush the uprising. Rebels said this week they attacked a northern military air base and shot down a helicopter that was bombarding a district of Damascus.
"The bloodshed in Syria is our responsibility on all our shoulders and we have to know that the bloodshed cannot stop without effective interference from all of us," Mursi said.
"We all have to announce our full solidarity with the struggle of those seeking freedom and justice in Syria, and translate this sympathy into a clear political vision that supports a peaceful transition to a democratic system of rule that reflects the demands of the Syrian people for freedom."
His comments prompted Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem to storm out of the meeting, complaining that Mursi was inciting fighters to "continue shedding Syrian blood", Syrian state television said.
ASSAD SAYS NEEDS TIME
Assad, in his first television interview since rebels took their fight into the heart of Damascus and the country's biggest city, Aleppo, said on Wednesday his fight to put down the uprising was going well but needed more time.
"Everyone wants this battle to be completed in days or weeks but this isn't reasonable, because we are in the middle of a regional and international struggle and it needs time to be resolved," he said.
Mainly peaceful protests were met with force by Assad's military, and the uprising has degenerated into a civil war with sectarian overtones and regional dimensions. The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are backed by regional Sunni powers, particularly Gulf Arab states and Turkey.
Assad, whose Alawite community is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has support from Iran, a rival of Gulf Arab states and Western powers. Lebanon's Shi'ite militia Hezbollah has also shown solidarity with the Syrian president.
The role of regional powers has assumed greater significance because of deadlock at U.N. Security Council, where diplomatic stalemate has marginalized the major powers.
U.S., Russian, and Chinese ministers are not expected to attend Thursday's U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria, underlining the fact that both Assad's critics and backers on the council see little prospect of it taking any action.
"We wanted a resolution on humanitarian issues, but we faced a double refusal," said a French diplomat, whose country will chair the meeting in New York.
"The United States and Britain believe we have reached the end of what can be achieved at the Security Council, and Moscow and Beijing said that such a resolution would have been biased."
Nearly a year and a half after the uprising erupted, Assad's political foes are equally divided.
A member of the Syrian National Council, which once hoped to win international endorsement as the country's leadership-in-waiting, resigned this week complaining it was not doing enough to back the revolt and must be replaced by a new political authority.
"My sense was that the SNC was not up to facing the increasing challenges on the ground," Basma Kodmani, the latest council member to break from the SNC, told Reuters.
PLANE "SHOT DOWN"
The Syrian Martyrs Brigade said on Thursday it brought down a plane near the town of al-Thayabiya. Video footage on Al Arabiya television showed what appeared to be smoke in the sky and a person parachuting down. An army helicopter hovered over the area, apparently in search of the pilot.
"The brigade has started targeting the regime's air assets, including military airports," a member of the group said from Idlib, declining to give further details.
As well as targeting rebels, Assad's jets and artillery have also struck at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo province in the last three weeks, killing dozens of people as they waited in line to buy bread, the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said.
It said the attacks were either deliberate or done without care to avoid the hundreds of civilians forced to queue outside a dwindling number of bakeries in Syria's biggest city, a front line in the civil war.
One attack two weeks ago killed around 60 people and wounded more than 70, it said.
The fighting around Aleppo, Damascus and the southern province of Deraa, where protests against Assad first erupted in March 2011, has prompted waves of refugees to flood into neighboring Turkey and Jordan.
Turkey urged the United Nations to protect displaced Syrians inside their own country, to take the pressure off its crowded refugee camps, and France said it was studying the issue of buffer zones in Syria, an idea Assad dismissed as unrealistic.
(Additional reporting by John Irish at the United Nations, Erika Solomon in Beirut, Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Jon Boyle)
2.
U.N. ALL TALK ON SYRIA AID AS WEST MULLS MILITARY ACTION
By John Irish and Michelle Nichols
** France, Britain: contingency plans for range of options -- Turkey says U.N. has nothing new for Syrian people -- U.N. says experience shows safe havens not always effective -- Paris, London boost humanitarian assistance for Syria **
Reuters
August 30, 2012
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/syria-crisis-un-idUSL2E8JU8Y320120831
UNITED NATIONS -- A U.N. Security Council meeting on Syria's aid crisis achieved nothing new on Thursday except to highlight global paralysis on the 17-month conflict as Western powers warned that military action to secure civilian safe zones was still an option.
While the Security Council impasse between Western nations and Russia and China means a resolution to approve such a move appears impossible, countries could act outside the authority of the world body and intervene, as happened in Kosovo in 1999.
"How long are we going to sit and watch while an entire generation is being wiped out by random bombardment and deliberate mass targeting?" Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu asked the Security Council.
"I was expecting this meeting to produce tangible solutions to the suffering of the Syrian people," he said. "We don't have anything new to say to thousands of Syrians who suffer at the hands of the regime as the U.N. is entrapped by inaction."
The meeting produced neither a resolution nor a statement approved by the 15 Security Council members.
Ankara has repeatedly urged the United Nations to protect displaced Syrians inside their country as the number of refugees swells in neighboring states.
France and Britain said ahead of the meeting that civilian safe havens were being considered.
"We're ruling nothing out and we have contingency planning for a wide range of scenarios," said British Foreign Secretary William Hague. "We also have to be clear that anything like a safe zone requires military intervention."
Creating a buffer zone for displaced Syrians would be difficult because a U.N. Security Council resolution would be needed to set up a no-fly zone to protect the area, and Russia and China would not approve such a move, diplomats said.
However, the Security Council could be bypassed to take action. The United States and its European allies did this in 1999 when they turned to NATO to halt a Serbian onslaught in Kosovo with a bombing campaign against Serbia.
The United Nations warned that the idea of buffer zones raised serious questions and had not always proved effective.
"Bitter experience has shown that it is rarely possible to provide effective protection and security in such areas," said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.
AID FOR REBEL ZONES
As Syria spirals deeper into civil war, the 15-member council is paralyzed as Russia and China have blocked three Western-backed resolutions that criticized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and threatened sanctions.
France, which is council president for August, had hoped the body could unite to deal with a shortfall in humanitarian aid and convened Thursday's meeting, which was attended by ministers from Syria's neighbors Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
"If sadly the conflict continues then we have to examine various solutions. We have to be realistic," said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
But the absence of the U.S., Russian, and Chinese foreign ministers at the meeting highlights the Security Council's failure to end Syria's conflict, which the United Nations says has killed nearly 20,000 people.
Less than half the council members sent ministers, and of the permanent members -- the United States, China, Russia, Britain, and France -- only Fabius and Hague attended.
The two countries announced an increase in their humanitarian aid -- 3 million pounds ($4.74 million) from London and 5 million euros ($6.25 million) from Paris -- and called on other states to boost their commitments.
Fabius said Paris was channeling some aid to areas of Syria no longer under government control so that local communities can self-govern, encouraging people not to flee the country.
"The opposition has taken strong positions in the country," Fabius said after the meeting. "We need to help them financially, administratively, and in terms of supplies."
Aid groups say as many as 300,000 Syrians have poured out of Syria since the uprising against Syrian Assad's rule began last year, while up to 3 million have been displaced. Turkey has seen the highest refugee influx.
SYRIA SAYS HELP NEEDED
Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari said Syria did need humanitarian assistance, but its sovereignty should not be undermined in the process. He described refugee camps in neighboring countries as "detention camps."
"Syria feels a great bitterness and sorrow when we see some of our brothers living in tents on the border in dreadful conditions being dissuaded by attempts at intimidation from returning home," Ja'afari told the council. "They are turned into refugees, prisoners of these camps."
He said they were fleeing Syria because "terrorists" were using them as human shields.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin blamed economic sanctions imposed on Syria by the United States and the European Union for worsening the humanitarian crisis.
"We fundamentally oppose such practices," Churkin told the Council. "They simply complicate the life of simple citizens and deny them the opportunity to meet their elementary needs and fully enjoy basic human rights."
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said no amount of aid would end the bloodshed and suffering. "That day will come only once Assad has departed and a peaceful Syrian-led transition to democracy has begun," she said.
Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who will replace Kofi Annan as the U.N.-Arab League Syria mediator on Saturday, also attended but did not brief members. Annan blamed the Security Council impasse for hampering his six-month bid to broker peace and leading to his decision to step down.
"It is essential that the international community, and this Council in particular, unite behind him and his efforts," U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson said. "Separate diplomatic tracks will only prolong the violence, the human rights abuses and the humanitarian crisis."
Iran said on Wednesday it will form a team with other non-aligned countries to explore solutions to the crisis, while the United States has said it will turn to alternatives such as the "Friends of Syria" grouping of allied countries to pressure Assad after the Security Council's failure to act.
"If we do not act against such a crime against humanity happening in front of our eyes, we become accomplice to the crime," Turkey's Davutoglu told the Council.
3.
SYRIA CRISIS: FRANCE, BRITAIN SAY MILITARY INTERVENTION IS ON THE TABLE
By John Irish and Michelle Nichols
Reuters
August 30, 2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/30/syria-crisis-military-intervention_n_1843973.html
UNITED NATIONS -- France and Britain warned Syria's President Bashar al-Assad on Thursday that military action to secure safe zones for civilians inside the country was being considered despite the paralysis of the U.N. Security Council over how to end the 17-month conflict.
While the Security Council impasse between Western nations and Russia and China means a resolution to approve such a move appears impossible, countries could act outside the authority of the world body and intervene, as happened in Kosovo in 1999.
"We're ruling nothing out and we have contingency planning for a wide range of scenarios," British Foreign Secretary William Hague told a news conference at the United Nations ahead of a meeting of Security Council foreign ministers later on Thursday to discuss how to ease Syria's humanitarian crisis.
"We also have to be clear that anything like a safe zone requires military intervention and that of course is something that has to be weighed very carefully," Hague said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who is attending the meeting, urged the United Nations on Wednesday to protect displaced Syrians inside their country, but Assad dismissed talk of a buffer zone.
Creating a buffer zone for displaced Syrians would be difficult because a U.N. Security Council resolution would be needed to set up a no-fly zone to protect the area, and Russia and China would not approve such a move, diplomats said.
It is not the first time Russia has posed difficulties for the United States and its allies on the Security Council. In the 1990s, Moscow strongly supported Serbia in the Balkan Wars and acted as Belgrade's protector on the council.
After an ineffectual U.N. presence failed to stop genocide in the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, the United States and its European allies infuriated Russia by bypassing the deadlocked Security Council and turning to NATO to halt the Serbian onslaught in Kosovo with a bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999.
As Syria spirals deeper into a civil war, the 15-member council is paralyzed as Russia and China have blocked three Western-backed resolutions that criticized Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and threatened sanctions.
France, which is council president for August, had hoped the body could unite to deal with a shortfall in humanitarian aid and convened Thursday's meeting, which will also be attended by ministers from Syria's neighbors Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.
"If Assad falls quickly, then the reconstruction can take place, but if sadly the conflict continues then we have to examine various solutions. We have to be realistic," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the joint news conference with Hague.
AID FOR REBEL ZONES
But the absence of the U.S., Russian, and Chinese foreign ministers at Thursday's meeting highlights the Security Council's failure to end Syria's conflict, which the United Nations says has killed nearly 20,000 people.
Less than half the council members have sent ministers, and of the permanent members ,- the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France ,- only Fabius and Hague are attending.
The two countries announced an increase in their humanitarian aid on Thursday - 3 million pounds ($4.74 million)from London and 5 million euros ($6.25 million) from Paris -, and called on other states to boost their commitments.
Diplomats said the meeting would not produce any further action on Syria from the Security Council.
"We wanted a resolution on humanitarian issues, but we faced a double refusal," said a French diplomat, who did not want to be identified. "The United States and Britain believe we have reached the end of what can be achieved at the Security Council, and Moscow and Beijing said that such a resolution would have been biased."
Fabius said Paris was channeling some of its aid to areas of Syria no longer under government control so that local communities can self-govern, encouraging people not to flee Syria to neighboring countries.
More than 200,000 Syrians, and as many as 300,000 according to some aid groups, have poured out of Syria since the uprising against Assad's rule began last year, while up to 3 million are displaced. Turkey, which has seen the highest refugee influx, wants a solution to the problem.
The Security Council is due to hear from Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres and ministers from Turkey and Jordan.
Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who will replace Kofi Annan as the U.N.-Arab League Syria mediator on Saturday, will also attend but will not brief members. Annan blamed the Security Council impasse for hampering his six-month-old bid to broker peace and leading to his decision to step down.
Brahimi met informally with the Security Council on Wednesday and his spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, told reporters he had been in "listening mode" while he works out how to approach the Syria conflict.
While Thursday's meeting was focusing on the humanitarian crisis, Fabius and Hague urged members of Assad's government and military to defect and renewed their call for Assad to be held accountable before the International Criminal Court.
"Assad is a criminal and a criminal must be judged and punished," Fabius said.
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