Annan ‘impatient and frustrated’ over Syria

BASSEM MROUE

ZEINA KARAM

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT — Say­ing he is impa­tient and frus­trated, spe­cial envoy Kofi Annan called on the Syr­ian pres­i­dent Fri­day to imple­ment a U.N.-brokered peace plan fol­low­ing a hor­rific week­end mas­sacre that killed more than 100 people.

The appeal came as the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity faced increas­ing pres­sure to act against the regime as frus­tra­tion mounts over the Houla killings and the fail­ure of Annan’s plan to stop the bloodshed.

Nearly 300 U.N. observers have been deployed around Syria to mon­i­tor a cease-fire that was sup­posed to go into effect on April 12, but the peace plan has unrav­eled amid daily vio­lence and the images from the Houla mas­sacre caused out­rage to spike. Many of the dead were women and chil­dren who were gunned down inside their homes.

U.N. inves­ti­ga­tors have said there are strong sus­pi­cions that pro-regime gun­men are respon­si­ble for at least some of the killings dur­ing the Houla mas­sacre, which occurred over sev­eral hours start­ing late last Fri­day. The gov­ern­ment denies any role and blames rebel fighters.

Mem­bers of the U.N.’s top human rights body over­whelm­ingly decided Fri­day to con­demn Syria over the killings, with only Rus­sia, China and Cuba vot­ing against the U.S.-backed res­o­lu­tion. Rus­sia and China have twice shielded Assad’s regime from the United Nations sanc­tions over his crack­down on protests.

But Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin insisted Fri­day that Moscow wants to help Annan achieve “pos­i­tive results” and pre­vent an all-out civil war in Syria. He rejected asser­tions that Moscow is prop­ping up Assad’s regime.

“We don’t sup­port any of the par­ties that are cre­at­ing threats of a civil war,” he told reporters in Berlin.

In fresh vio­lence Fri­day, Syr­ian secu­rity forces opened fire as thou­sands of pro­test­ers poured into the streets to mark the Houla mas­sacre, activists said. Activists said at least five peo­ple were killed in shoot­ing in the north­ern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib and the south­ern Daraa province.

Gun­men also report­edly killed 11 work­ers on their way to work Thurs­day at a state-owned fer­til­izer fac­tory in the cen­tral province of Homs — the third mass killing reported in Syria in a week.

Annan stuck by his six-point roadmap dur­ing a visit to Beirut on Fri­day, but said Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad must send “a sig­nal to his peo­ple and the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity that he is deter­mined to imple­ment the plan and that he is going to move ahead in search of peace.”

“I know we are all impa­tient, we are all frus­trated by the vio­lence, by the killings … I think per­haps I am more frus­trated than most of you because I am in the thick of things,” he told reporters at a press conference.

With Syria grow­ing increas­ingly chaotic in recent months, the U.N.’s top human rights offi­cial echoed warn­ings that the coun­try was veer­ing toward all-out civil war.

Navi Pil­lay, the U.N. High Com­mis­sioner for Human Rights, appealed for con­tin­ued sup­port for Annan’s plan dur­ing an emer­gency meet­ing of the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council.

“Oth­er­wise, the sit­u­a­tion in Syria might descend into a full-fledged con­flict and the future of the coun­try, as well as the region as a whole could be in grave dan­ger,” Pil­lay said in a speech read out on her behalf as coun­tries lined up to express their hor­ror about the mas­sacre in a clus­ter of vil­lages known as Houla.

Syria’s ambas­sador to the U.N. in Geneva, Fayssal al-Hamwi, also con­demned the killings but blamed them on “groups of armed ter­ror­ists” seek­ing to ignite sec­tar­ian strife.

The gov­ern­ment restricts jour­nal­ists from mov­ing freely, mak­ing it nearly impos­si­ble to inde­pen­dently ver­ify accounts from either side.

Mean­while, Syr­ian pro­test­ers came under fire from gov­ern­ment troops in the south­ern province of Daraa, the sub­urbs of Dam­as­cus and Aleppo, the country’s largest city, and Idlib, accord­ing to the Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights.

An ama­teur video said to be taken in the posh Dam­as­cus neigh­bor­hood of Mazzeh showed scores of peo­ple inside a mosque chant­ing “Death is bet­ter than humil­i­a­tion!” and accus­ing the Syr­ian army of being traitors.

The Obser­va­tory also said gun­men killed 11 work­ers at a state-owned fer­til­izer fac­tory near the town of Qusair in Homs province.

The oppo­si­tion and the gov­ern­ment traded blame for the killings.

An ama­teur video posted online by activists pur­ports to show the blood­ied bod­ies of the Bouayda vic­tims lying face down at a makeshift hos­pi­tal in Qusair. The muf­fled sounds of men cry­ing could be heard in the back­ground as a per­son tries to resus­ci­tate one of the workers.

On Thurs­day, 13 bound corpses, many appar­ently shot execution-style, were found in the east­ern province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi bor­der. The men were believed to be work­ers for an oil com­pany. It was unclear who killed them.

The U.N. said in March that more than 9,000 peo­ple have been killed in the con­flict. Activists have put the toll far higher, say­ing 13,000 have died. The upris­ing began in March 2011 with largely peace­ful protests call­ing for reform but mor­phed into an insur­gency as the gov­ern­ment launched a bru­tal crack­down and many in the oppo­si­tion took up arms.

The Houla mas­sacre was one of the most bru­tal attacks. Both sides have blamed each other for the killings.

On Thurs­day, Syria claimed up to 800 rebel fight­ers car­ried out the Houla mas­sacre, giv­ing its most com­pre­hen­sive expla­na­tion to date of the bloodshed.

The government’s nar­ra­tive starkly con­tra­dicted accounts of wit­nesses who blamed “shabiha,” the shad­owy gun­men who oper­ate on behalf of Assad’s regime. The U.N. also said it had strong sus­pi­cions those pro-regime gun­men were respon­si­ble for much of the car­nage in Houla.

Even if the shabiha gun­men were respon­si­ble for Houla, how­ever, there was no clear evi­dence that the regime directly ordered the massacre.

In another devel­op­ment, a pre­vi­ously unknown Syr­ian rebel group said it is hold­ing 11 Lebanese Shi­ite pil­grims kid­napped on May 22 after cross­ing into Syria from Turkey on their way to Lebanon. The group call­ing itself Syr­ian Rebels in Aleppo said in a state­ment obtained by Al-Jazeera TV that the hostages are in good health.

The state­ment included pho­tographs said to be of the hostages and their pass­ports. Al-Jazeera, which aired the pho­tos Thurs­day night, did not say how it obtained the mate­r­ial. Its authen­tic­ity could not be inde­pen­dently verified.

The group claimed five hostages were mem­bers of the mil­i­tant Lebanese Hezbol­lah group and demanded its leader, Sheik Has­san Nas­ral­lah, apol­o­gize for com­ments he made in a speech last week. The group did not spec­ify which com­ments they found offen­sive. Nas­ral­lah, an ally of the Syr­ian regime, had said the kid­nap­ping would not change his group’s stance.

The group said nego­ti­a­tions for the release of the hostages could begin after Nas­ral­lah apologizes.

Nas­ral­lah, speak­ing through video link to a con­fer­ence in Beirut Fri­day, urged the kid­nap­pers to release the hostages.

“If you have a prob­lem with me, there are many ways and means to solve this,” he said. “You want to solve it through war, so be it. You want too solve it peace­fully, we can … But leave the inno­cent peo­ple aside.”

Posted by AP News on Jun 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.