Russia condemns ally Syria over massacre of 108

In this image from ama­teur video released by the Shaam News Net­work accessed Mon­day pur­ports to show black smoke ris­ing from build­ings in Homs, Syria. U.N. envoy Kofi Annan called Mon­day on “every indi­vid­ual with a gun” in Syria to lay down arms, say­ing he was hor­ri­fied by a week­end mas­sacre that killed more than 100 peo­ple, includ­ing women and small chil­dren. (Cour­tesy | Shaam News Network)

ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY

LYNN BERRY

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT — A week­end mas­sacre of more than 100 peo­ple emerged as a poten­tial turn­ing point in the Syr­ian cri­sis Mon­day, gal­va­niz­ing even staunch ally Rus­sia to take an unusu­ally hard line against Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s government.

Ana­lysts said Rus­sia may be warn­ing Assad that he needs to change course or lose Moscow’s sup­port, which has been a key layer of pro­tec­tion for the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment dur­ing the upris­ing that began in March 2011.

Rus­sia has grown increas­ingly crit­i­cal of Dam­as­cus in recent months, but For­eign Min­is­ter Sergey Lavrov’s lat­est com­ments were unusu­ally strong. Although he said oppo­si­tion forces have ter­ror­ists among them, he put the blame for 15 months of car­nage pri­mar­ily on Assad’s government.

“The gov­ern­ment bears the main respon­si­bil­ity for what is going on,” Lavrov said in Moscow fol­low­ing a meet­ing with British For­eign Sec­re­tary William Hague. “Any gov­ern­ment in any coun­try bears respon­si­bil­ity for the secu­rity of its citizens.”

Alexei Malashenko, a Mid­dle East expert with the Carnegie Moscow Cen­ter, said Lavrov’s com­ments sug­gest Rus­sia may be back­ing away from its long-standing sup­port for Damascus.

“Bashar Assad is dri­ving him­self and Rus­sia into a cor­ner,” Malashenko said. “Bashar has def­i­nitely got­ten the sense that he may lose Russia’s sym­pa­thy, and he may step back a bit.”

It is not clear whether Assad’s forces were exclu­sively to blame for the slaugh­ter of 108 peo­ple Fri­day in Houla, a col­lec­tion of poor farm­ing vil­lages in Homs province. The United Nations said 49 chil­dren and 34 women were among the dead; some had bul­let holes through their heads.

The U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil blamed Syr­ian forces for artillery and tank shelling of res­i­den­tial areas, but it did not clearly state who was respon­si­ble for the close-range shoot­ing deaths and “severe phys­i­cal abuse” of civilians.

Activists from the area said the army pounded the vil­lages with artillery and clashed with local rebels. They said pro-government gun­men later stormed the area, doing the bulk of the killing by gun­ning down men in the streets and stab­bing women and chil­dren in their homes.

The Syr­ian gov­ern­ment rejected that account entirely, say­ing sol­diers were attacked in their bases and fought back in self-defense with­out leav­ing their bases.

Rus­sia blamed both the gov­ern­ment and the rebels for the Houla massacre.

“Both sides have obvi­ously had a hand in the deaths of inno­cent peo­ple, includ­ing sev­eral dozen women and chil­dren,” Lavrov said. “This area is con­trolled by the rebels, but it is also sur­rounded by the gov­ern­ment troops.”

He said Rus­sia has no inter­est in prop­ping up Assad but wants Syria to guide its own tran­si­tion under a plan bro­kered by spe­cial envoy Kofi Annan.

“We don’t sup­port the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment; we sup­port Kofi Annan’s plan,” Lavrov said.

Moscow’s pro-Syria stance has been moti­vated in part by its strate­gic and defense ties to Dam­as­cus, includ­ing weapons sales. Rus­sia also rejects what it sees as a world order dom­i­nated by the U.S.

Los­ing Russ­ian sup­port could be dis­as­trous for Assad because his crack­down has left him almost com­pletely iso­lated inter­na­tion­ally. Rus­sia and China have stood by him so far, using their veto power to block U.N. res­o­lu­tions against him.

Hilal Khashan, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity of Beirut, said the Houla mas­sacre appears to be ush­er­ing in a change in Russia’s position.

“There is a shift and the momen­tum against the regime is gath­er­ing,” Khashan said. “The momen­tum is build­ing and the Rus­sians are not block­ing the ris­ing momentum.”

The Syr­ian con­flict is among the most explo­sive of the Arab Spring, in part because of Syria’s alle­giances to pow­er­ful forces, includ­ing Lebanon’s Hezbol­lah and Shi­ite pow­er­house Iran.

Activists say as many as 12,000 peo­ple have been killed since the upris­ing began. The U.N. put the toll as of March, a year into the upris­ing, at 9,000, but many hun­dreds more have died since.

Annan’s peace plan, which calls for a cease-fire and dia­logue, has been fal­ter­ing for weeks. But West­ern lead­ers have pinned their hopes on his diplo­matic pres­sure, since the U.S. and oth­ers are unwill­ing to get deeply involved in another Arab nation in turmoil.

Annan arrived in Dam­as­cus on Mon­day for talks with Assad and other offi­cials and called on “every indi­vid­ual with a gun” in Syria to lay down arms, say­ing he was hor­ri­fied by the Houla massacre.

Britain’s Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron and French Pres­i­dent Fran­cois Hol­land spoke on the phone and expressed their desire to work with Rus­sia to resolve the cri­sis in Syria. A British spokes­woman said Cameron and Hol­lande agreed to act together to “bring an end to the bloody sup­pres­sion of the Syr­ian people.”

Activists reported fresh vio­lence Mon­day, say­ing troops shelled sev­eral neigh­bor­hoods in Hama, killing at least 24 people.

Posted by AP News on May 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.