Kofi Annan in last ditch effort to save Syria peace plan
telegraph.co.uk | May 28th 2012
Mr Annan will meet the foreign minister, Walid Muallem, in the afternoon and President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday to pass on the UN's outrage at the latest killings, said by opposition activists to be the work of army tanks and Shabiha or "Ghost" militias from the Alawite religious minority to which the Assad family belongs.
As he prepared to fly, activists reported scores more people had been killed by intense shell-fire in the city of Hama, north of Houla, in a fresh bombardment on Sunday night.
The Hama Revolution Leadership Council said 41 people had been killed after the Syrian army responded with shelling to attacks on its checkpoints by the Free Syrian Army. Some local activists told The Daily Telegraph the figure would rise.
The United Nations security council issued a strongly worded condemnation of the Houla killings on Sunday evening that nevertheless sought to avoid assigning blame directly.
"The security council condemned in the strongest possible terms the killings, confirmed by United Nations observers, of dozens of men, women and children and the wounding of hundreds more in the village of (Houla), near Homs, in attacks that involved a series of government artillery and tank shellings on a residential neighbourhood," the statement said.
"Such outrageous use of force against civilian population constitutes a violation of applicable international law and of the commitments of the Syrian Government under United Nations Security Council Resolutions."
The wording was carefully designed after objections from Russia to anything which accused Syria directly of responsibility for the deaths of so many women and children. The Assad regime said that "armed groups and terrrorists" carried out the killings, though activists and residents of the town said they were attacked by Alawite gangs from two neighbouring villages.
Alexander Pankin, the Russian deputy ambassador to the UN, said the circumstances were "murky" and said there was no clear evidence to show that Damascus was guilty.
The security council was briefed directly by Maj Gen Robert Mood, the head of the UN monitoring mission, who visited Houla on Saturday and Sunday and counted the bodies. He updated from 92 to 108 the number of dead in the attacks, including 49 children and 34 women.
They began with army shelling and then continued with raids on houses in Taldaw, one of the settlements that makes up Houla, and the apparently cold-blooded killing of residents with knives and gunfire. Videos posted online showed rows of children's bodies, some horribly disfigured, and weeping mothers.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, said observers found clear evidence of the use of artillery and tank shells, which only regime forces possess.
He said that "other forms of violence, including shootings at close range and severe physical abuse" were used, though the detailed circumstances were unknown.
Western nations were more direct. "It seems quite clear that the massacre in Houla was caused by heavy bombardment, by government artillery and tanks," the British ambassador, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, said. "The fact is, it is an atrocity and it was perpetrated by the Syrian government."
France's deputy ambassador, Martin Briens, said: "With this new crime, the assassin regime of Bashar al-Assad is taking Syria deeper into horror."
Sir Mark said it was time to discuss the "next steps" though it remains unclear what options other than further sanctions by individual governments the international community has, given the opposition of Russia and China to any form of concerted action.
The rebels themselves are now calling for the West to act independently, and called for a "battle of liberation" against the Assad regime.
Original Page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9294473/Annan-in-last-ditch-effort-to-save-peace-plan.html
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