Russia won a promise from Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday to bring an
end to bloodshed in his country, but Western and Arab states acted to isolate
Assad further after activists and rebels said his forces killed over 100 in the
city of Homs.
Visiting Damascus, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
hinted that the issue of Assad giving up power – a central element of the Arab
proposal that Russia vetoed this week at the UN Security Council – had been
raised. Assad said he would cooperate with any plan that stabilized Syria, but
made clear that it would only include an earlier Arab League proposal that
called for dialogue, release of prisoners and withdrawing the army from protest
centers.
France withdrew its ambassador on Tuesday, vowing not to give up
on peace efforts and saying Assad’s days at the helm are
numbered.
Opposition activists said government forces renewed shelling of
Homs just before Lavrov’s arrival, killing 19 people in an onslaught they say
has claimed more than 300 lives in the past five days. There were also reports
from residents of shelling and fighting between government and rebel forces in
Hama, another urban stronghold of anti-Assad sentiment.
Also on Tuesday,
hundreds of e-mails from Assad’s office were leaked by the hacker group
Anonymous. The e-mails were reportedly sent from Sheherazad Jaafari, a press
attaché at Syria’s UN mission, to Assad’s media adviser Bouthaina Shaaban in
advance of his December interview with Barbara Walters of ABC News.
In
the e-mails, obtained by Haaretz, Jaafari reportedly wrote, “It is hugely
important and worth mentioning that ‘mistakes’ have been done in the beginning
of the crises because we did not have a well-organized ‘police force.’ American
psyche can be easily manipulated when they hear that there are ‘mistakes’ done and now we are ‘fixing it.’
“It
would be worth mentioning how your personality has been attacked and praised in
the last decade according to the media,” she wrote, referring to Assad. “At one
point H.E. [Assad] was viewed as a hero and in other times H.E. was the ‘bad
guy.’ Americans love these kinds of things and get convinced by
it.”
Facebook and YouTube, Jaafari wrote, are important to “the American
mindset” and Assad should mention that “the fact that Facebook and YouTube are
open now – especially during the crisis – is important.”
Russian media
quoted Lavrov as saying Assad had assured him he wanted an end to violence by
both sides and an expanded Arab League monitoring mission, and that a referendum
would be held on a new draft constitution, followed by free
elections.
“President Assad informed [me] he will meet in the coming days
with the commission that prepared a draft of the new constitution,” state-run
Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported. “The work is finished, and now a date
will be announced for a referendum on this important document for
Syria.”
In remarks carried by state-run Rossiya-24 television, Lavrov
said: “On the basis of this new Basic Law [constitution], general elections will
be organized and conducted in which many parties will participate. The elections
will be held on the basis of a new constitution in which there are no privileges
or advantages for [Assad’s] Ba’ath Party.”
Sherkoh Abbas, president of
the exiled Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, said a referendum would be
pointless.
“Russia is looking for a way out for the regime – some kind of
transition. But a referendum on what? The people have made their choice –
they’ve hit the streets,” he told The Jerusalem Post from
Washington.
Syrian state television said the commission dealing with a
new constitution had completed its work on Tuesday.
The state news agency
SANA quoted Assad as saying Syria would cooperate with any effort to resolve its
crisis that promotes stability in the country.
“Syria from the beginning
has welcomed any efforts that back the Syrian solution to the crisis,” SANA
quoted Assad as saying while meeting Lavrov. Lavrov told Interfax that Assad
“assured us he was ‘completely committed to the task of stopping violence
regardless of where it may come from,’” and was ready for dialogue with all
political groups in Syria.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Lavrov and
Foreign Intelligence Service chief Mikhail Fradkov had gone to Damascus because
Moscow wanted to see “the swiftest stabilization of the situation in Syria on
the basis of the swiftest implementation of democratic reforms whose time has
come.”
Syrian state television showed hundreds of people gathering on a
main Damascus highway to welcome Lavrov. They waved Syrian, Russian and
Hezbollah flags and held up two Russian flags made out of hundreds of red, white
and blue balloons.
In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero
explained France’s withdrawal of its ambassador.
“Faced with worsening
repression led by the Damascus regime against its own population, French
authorities have decided to recall their ambassador in Syria for consultations,”
he said.
“We will not give up,” Foreign Minister Alain Juppé told a
foreign affairs debate in the Senate. “We have two objectives: to
intensify the pressure on the countries that use their veto and to add pressure
on the Syrian regime, which is discredited. Its day are numbered and the veto in
New York is not a blank check to continue [repression].”
European Union
states prepared a new round of sanctions, EU diplomats said on Tuesday, with the
focus on central bank assets and trade in precious metals, gold and
diamonds.
Syrian first lady Asma Assad broke her 11-month silence with a
letter in support of the government. In a letter to The Times of London,
she wrote that her husband is the “president of Syria, not a faction of Syrians,
and the first lady supports him in that role.
“The first lady’s very busy
agenda is still focused on supporting the various charities she has long been
involved with and rural development as well as supporting the president as
needed,” she reportedly wrote from an unknown location. “These days she is
equally involved in bridging gaps and encouraging dialogue. She listens
to and comforts the families of the victims of the violence.”
The Gulf
Cooperation Council said its members were recalling their ambassadors from
Damascus and expelling Syrian envoys from their own capitals, in response to
surging violence.
“It is necessary for the Arab states... to take every
decisive measure faced with this dangerous escalation against the Syrian
people,” the Saudi-led bloc said in a statement, adding: “Nearly a year into the
crisis, there is no glint of hope in a solution.”
Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an ex-ally who has turned against Assad, described the UN
vetoes as “a fiasco for the civilized world,” and said Ankara was preparing a
new initiative with those who oppose the Syrian government.
Opposition
activists said the fresh assault on Homs came after 95 people were killed on
Monday in the city of one million, Syria’s third biggest. More than 200 were
reported killed there by sustaining shelling on Friday night.
A further
19 people were killed and at least 40 were wounded in Tuesday’s barrage,
activists said. Some reported fighting between army defectors and
government forces trying move into areas the rebels hold in Homs.
Assad
has said parliamentary elections will be held when the constitution is approved,
but has also pledged to eradicate “terrorists” he associates with the
violence.
Syria’s opposition, which rejected a Russian invitation for
talks with Syrian officials in Moscow, says Assad’s promises of reforms have
been discredited by persistent armed attacks on protests, in which the UN says
5,000 people have been killed.