World powers worry Syria sliding to civil war

EDITH M. LEDERER

JOHN HEILPRIN

Asso­ci­ated Press

GENEVA — World pow­ers share a belief that Syria could descend into civil war and plan to map out pos­si­ble ways to avoid such a dis­as­ter for the region, a deputy to inter­na­tional envoy Kofi Annan said Wednesday.

Jean-Marie Gue­henno told reporters after pri­vately brief­ing the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil, the world body’s most pow­er­ful unit, that diplo­mats are deeply trou­bled by Syria’s cycle of violence.

“I believe that in the coun­cil there’s an under­stand­ing that any slid­ing toward full-scale civil war in Syria would be cat­a­strophic, and the secu­rity coun­cil now needs to have that kind of strate­gic dis­cus­sion on how that needs to be avoided,” Gue­henno said in Geneva after speak­ing to the New York-based Secu­rity Coun­cil by videoconference.

How­ever, there was no indi­ca­tion that Rus­sia, one of the veto-wielding per­ma­nent mem­bers of the Secu­rity Coun­cil, was chang­ing it’s posi­tion on Syria.

Dmitry Peskov, Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, was quoted as say­ing by the ITAR-Tass news agency Wednes­day that “there can be no talk” about a shift in Russia’s stance on Syria under for­eign pressure.

Rus­sia, along with China, has twice shielded Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s regime from the U.N. sanc­tions over his crack­down on protests. Syria is Russia’s last ally in the region, pro­vid­ing Moscow with its only naval base out­side the for­mer Soviet Union and a top cus­tomer for Russ­ian weapons industries.

Gue­henno, the Annan deputy and a for­mer U.N. peace­keep­ing chief, also warned of the pos­si­bil­ity of out­side groups and ter­ror­ists tak­ing advan­tage of the vio­lence. “In any sit­u­a­tion where there is a risk of civil war you have oppor­tunis­tic actors, if one can say that, that can try to exploit that,” he said.

Gue­henno said he told the closed ses­sion of the 15-nation coun­cil that Annan’s six-point peace plan to end the 15-month con­flict must be fully imple­mented and that polit­i­cal process must include talks between the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment and the opposition.

“It’s very impor­tant that the Secu­rity Coun­cil be united in push­ing for a polit­i­cal process,” Gue­henno said.

Annan held talks with Assad in Dam­as­cus on Tues­day fol­low­ing the week­end mas­sacre in Houla of more than 100 peo­ple, many of them women and children.

At the U.N. head­quar­ters in New York, Germany’s U.N. Ambas­sador Peter Wit­tig said Gue­henno told the coun­cil that while Annan was in Dam­as­cus he appealed to Assad’s gov­ern­ment “to take bold steps for­ward” to end to end the vio­lence imme­di­ately and imple­ment the peace plan.

U.S. Ambas­sador Susan Rice said the worst but most prob­a­ble sce­nario in Syria is a fail­ure of Annan’s peace plan and a spread­ing con­flict that cre­ates “a major cri­sis” not only in Syria but also region-wide.

“And mem­bers of this coun­cil and mem­bers of the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity are left with the option only of con­sid­er­ing whether they are pre­pared to take actions out­side of the Annan plan and the author­ity of this coun­cil,” she told reporters.

The best sce­nario would be for the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment to imme­di­ately start com­ply­ing with the plan, she said, but that doesn’t seem to be “a high probability.”

And if Assad refuses to imple­ment it, Rice added, then the Secu­rity Coun­cil should set aside its dif­fer­ences and up the pres­sure on Syria with added sanctions.

Min­utes after she spoke, Russia’s U.N, Ambas­sador Vitaly Churkin told reporters that “our atti­tude to sanc­tions frankly con­tin­ues to be negative.”

But Rice, Churkin and other coun­cil mem­bers agree the best sce­nario is full imple­men­ta­tion of the Annan plan, with talks between oppos­ing sides, despite the increas­ing worry that will never happen.

They also agree on the need for all sides to imme­di­ately halt the vio­lence and for Syr­ian troops and heavy weapons to be with­drawn from towns and cities, with the gov­ern­ment also pro­vid­ing access to detainees, jour­nal­ists and human­i­tar­ian workers.

Annan said in Dam­as­cus that the sit­u­a­tion has reached “a tip­ping point” and many coun­cil ambas­sadors agreed, includ­ing Rice.

“I think we may be begin­ning to see the wheels com­ing off this bus,” she said.

Britain’s U.N. Ambas­sador Mark Lyall Grant said Gue­henno and one of his French suc­ces­sors, the cur­rent U.N. peace­keep­ing chief Herve Lad­sous, pro­vided a grim briefing.

Lyall Grant said there was a sense of “revul­sion” at the week­end mas­sacre and the increase in extrem­ist attacks with a new sec­tar­ian ele­ment, all of which are throw­ing up road­blocks to Annan’s peace plan.

“The key thing is unity of the coun­cil,” he said, call­ing for dis­cus­sion at the U.N. and in world cap­i­tals on how to avoid a civil war in Syria.

Posted by AP News on May 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.