LONDON – The United States,
European and Arab nations are set to deliver a stern warning to Syrian
President Bashar Assad that he must agree to an immediate cease-fire and
allow humanitarian aid into areas hardest hit by his regime's brutal
crackdown on opponents, or face as-yet unspecified punishments and an
increasingly emboldened and powerful armed resistance.
On the eve of a major international conference on Syria in Tunisia, U.S., European and Arab officials worked out details of the demands in London on Thursday as the former United Nations chief, Kofi Annan, was named to be a joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to deal with the crisis. Russia and China, foes of any intervention, reiterated their opposition to an international resolution.
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Diplomats said the "Friends of Syria" group
meeting in Tunis on Friday would demand Assad's compliance. They said
that failure on his part would result in tougher sanctions and predicted
that his opponents would grow stronger unless he accedes and accepts a
political transition that would see him leave power.
If Assad doesn't comply, "we think that the
pressure will continue to build. ... I think that the strategy followed
by the Syrians and their allies is one that can't stand the test of
legitimacy ... for any length of time," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in London after meeting about a dozen of her foreign minister colleagues to prepare for the Tunis event.
"There will be increasingly capable
opposition forces," she said. "They will from somewhere, somehow find
the means to defend themselves as well as begin offensive measures."
Clinton and others ruled out any overt,
direct lethal military aid to Assad's opponents, but her comments
indicated that such steps were at least being considered if not already
being done.
A draft of the Tunis conference's final
document obtained by The Associated Press calls on "the Syrian
government to implement an immediate cease-fire and to allow free and
unimpeded access by the United Nations and humanitarian agencies to
carry out a full assessment of needs in Homs and other areas."
Homs, Syria's third-largest city, has been under a fierce government attack for nearly three weeks.
The draft, which is still subject to change,
also demands "that humanitarian agencies be permitted to deliver vital
relief goods and services to civilians affected by the violence." More
than 5,400 people have been killed in the nearly year-old uprising.
Russia and China have vetoed two U.N. Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict in Syria and condemning Assad's crackdown.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's
office said he called his Chinese counterpart on Thursday and they
"reaffirmed the joint position of Russia and China."
Both countries support "a speedy end to any
violence in Syria and the launch of inclusive dialogue between the
authorities and the opposition without preconditions for a peaceful
settlement that excludes foreign interference in Syrian affairs," the
ministry said.
Meanwhile, Tunisia's presidential spokesman,
Adnan Mancer, told the AP in an interview ahead of Friday's meeting
that the North African country will propose a political solution to the
Syrian crisis that includes the deployment of a peacekeeping force and
Assad stepping down from power.
The political transition would be akin to what happened in Yemen, where president Ali Abdullah Saleh quit in favor of his deputy after widespread protests. The Arab League already has made similar calls on Assad.
To spur negotiations in that direction, the
Arab League and United Nations on Thursday jointly appointed Annan, the
former U.N. secretary-general, to be their special envoy to Syria with a
mandate to bring an end to the violence and promote a peaceful
political solution.
Annan will work on bringing an end to "all
violence and human rights violations, and promoting a peaceful solution
to the Syrian crisis," the two bodies said in a statement.
He will work with the government and
opposition to forge "a peaceful Syrian-led and inclusive political
solution that meets the democratic aspirations of the Syrian people
through a comprehensive political dialogue between the Syrian government
and the whole spectrum of the Syrian opposition," the statement said.
American officials accompanying Clinton to
the Friends of Syria meeting said the group would make clear to Assad
that his regime has a moral obligation to end the shelling of civilian
areas and allow assistance into the country. The burden is on Assad to
respond to the demands of the international community, they said.
"The efforts that we are undertaking with
the international community ... are intended to demonstrate the Assad
regime's deepening isolation," Clinton said. "Our immediate focus is on
increasing the pressure. We have got to find ways of getting food,
medicine and other humanitarian assistance into affected areas. This
takes time and it takes a lot of diplomacy."
Clinton met Thursday in London with Juppe and foreign ministers and senior officials from about a dozen countries, including Britain, Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates. More than 70 nations and international organizations are expected at the Tunis meeting.
Several nations have proposed creating
protected corridors through which humanitarian relief could flow but it
was not clear whether a consensus could be reached on the matter, as
such a step almost certainly would require a military component.
"There is no military option at the moment on the table, and as I have said before, France
could not envisage such an option without an international mandate.
It's a clear and constant guideline," French Foreign Minister Alain
Juppe said after discussions in London.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague
said military intervention was very unlikely, noting that "the
consequences of any outside intervention are much harder to foresee."
More workable, officials said, would be a cease-fire such as the one proposed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is calling for a daily two-hour break in fighting to provide aid
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/24/friends-syria-to-assad-immediate-cease-fire-or-face-new-punishment/#ixzz1nIX4u4z9
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