Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Syria streets calmer as U.N. team tours
Security Council OKS 300-member mission
BEIRUT — Five unarmed U. N. truce monitors who toured the battered city at the heart of the Syrian uprising on foot Saturday found the streets unusually calm after weeks of shelling as a throng of residents clamored for foreign military help to oust President Bashar Assad.
Their foray into a chaotic crowd in the city of Homs highlighted the risk to the observers, protected only by bright blue helmets and bullet-resistant vests. It came as the United Nations Security Council voted Saturday to expand the mission to 300 members in hopes of salvaging an international peace proposal marked by continued fighting between the military and opposition rebels.
The observers, members of an eight-member advance team that has been on the ground a week, were seen on amateur video Saturday as they walked through rubble-strewn deserted streets lined by gutted apartment buildings.
Activists reported only sporadic gunfire but no shelling, and said troops had
pulled armored vehicles off the streets. Two observers stayed behind in Homs to monitor the city Saturday evening.
The mission approved Saturday, initially for 90 days, is meant to shore up a ceasefire that officially took effect 10 days ago but has failed to halt violence. U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon has accused Assad of violating the truce and said Saturday that “the gross violations of the fundamental rights of the Syrian people must stop at once.” Rebel fighters have also kept up attacks.
This is the first time the Security Council has authorized unarmed U.N. military observers to go into a conflict area. Saturday’s resolution gave Ban the final say on when to deploy them, on the basis of developments on the ground including “the consolidation of the cease-fire.”
The resolution merged rival Russian and European texts and dropped a European threat of nonmilitary sanctions against Syria if it fails to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from towns and cities. Instead, it uses language from the resolution adopted April 14 that authorizes deployment of the 30-strong advance team of observers and expresses the council’s intention to assess implementation of the new resolution “and to consider further steps.”
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who pressed for speedy adoption of the resolution, told the council after Saturday’s vote that the measure is “of fundamental importance to push forward the process of the peaceful settlement in Syria” and urged it to support special envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point peace plan. Annan, the joint U.n.-arab League envoy, is expected to brief the council Tuesday, diplomats said.
A previous observer team, dispatched by the Arab League at the start of the year, withdrew after a month, having failed to halt the fighting.
Western diplomats put the onus on Syria to make the mission work. The U.S. ambassador, Susan Rice, warned that the U.S. would pursue sanctions if Assad doesn’t comply. Britain’s envoy, Mark Lyall Grant, said that “the mission will fail in its task if the regime continues to violate its commitments and obstructs the work of the mission.”
The truce and the observer mission are part of Annan’s plan for ending 13 months of violence and launching talks between Assad and those trying to oust him. Syria’s opposition and its Western supporters suspect Assad is largely paying lip service to the cease-fire since full compliance could quickly sweep him from power.
So far, the regime has ignored such provisions and instead continued attacking opposition strongholds, though on a smaller scale than before the truce deadline.
Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, told the Security Council that Syria informed Annan on Saturday that it has withdrawn troops and heavy weapons from urban centers, but he did not make clear when it occurred. Opposition activists said that in some areas, such as Homs, armored vehicles were moved off the streets Saturday but remained near populated areas.
Rice warned that if Assad doesn’t make good on all commitments or obstructs the monitors’ work, the United States would pursue other “measures,” which in diplomatic language usually means sanctions.
“Let there be no doubt. We, our allies and others in this body are planning and preparing for those actions that will be required of all of us if the Assad regime per-
sists in the slaughter of the Syrian people,” she said, adding the U.S. will not wait 90 days to take these measures if Syria keeps flouting its obligations.
Rice said the opposition welcomes the prospect of an expanded U.N. observer force because “they will be impartial eyes and ears,” and it is hoped they will have a restraining effect on the violence.
But she stressed that the United States is “sober about the risks, all the more so given the Assad regime’s long record of broken promises, deceit and disregard for the most basic standards of humanity.”
“The Syrian people, like us, know that the deployment of 300, or even 3,000, unarmed observers cannot on its own stop the Assad regime from waging its barbaric campaign of violence against the Syrian people,” she said. “What can bring a halt to this murderous rampage is continued and intensified external pressure on the Assad regime.”
Unlike most resolutions that call for reports to the Security Council in 30 days, the resolution adopted Saturday calls for reports every 15 days, which France’s U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud said will enable members to react “if things are going bad.”
Araud stressed that the deployment of the first seven observers “has not changed the murderous behavior of the regime.”
Despite Syria’s violations, the international community sees Annan’s plan as the only way forward.
Russia and China have shielded their ally Syria against Security Council condemnation, Western powers oppose military intervention, and Persian Gulf countries have failed to keep promises of funding rebels.
On Saturday, five observers toured rebel-held areas in Homs, a center of the uprising that has been battered by tank and mortar shells for weeks. Previously, the Syrian regime, citing security issues, had turned down a request by the observers to visit the city.
“We did not hear any shelling today,” said a Homs activist, who only identified himself as Abul-joud, for fear of repercussions.
At one point, gunfire went off in the distance while the observers were in the Bayada neighborhood in the company of residents. The group dashed into a house for cover, according to Abul-joud, who said he was walking with the observers. He said it did not appear the shots were aimed in the direction of the monitors.
Ammar, a lawyer and activist from Homs who spoke anonymously out of concern for retaliation, was suddenly available via cell phone. The cell-phone network had come back to life for the first time in weeks, he said, and people are edging nervously into hard-hit neighborhoods to check on their houses.
“Only the brave came to check on their houses, because it was as if you are entering the unknown, you never know when the battle will start again,” Ammar said.
Some people found their houses flattened. A few stopped to visit with friends and neighbors, but others grabbed what they could and fled again, Ammar said. “We feared that the lull would not last for long,” he said.
In the Jouret el- Shayah neighborhood of Homs, observers were quickly thronged by residents who chanted: “The people want military intervention,” according to video broadcast on the Al-jazeera satellite TV station.
Amateur video from the same neighborhood, posted online Saturday, shows the observers walking silently through the streets. A man in military uniform, apparently a rebel, pointed to the destruction, telling the team that “it’s all destroyed buildings.”
Dozens of residents chanted: “The people want to execute the president,” and “Freedom forever, against your will, Assad.”
The inspectors met the Homs governor and toured the neighborhoods of Baba Amr, al-zahraa, Zaidal and Fairouza, state-run media reported. Baba Amr was among the neighborhoods most heavily damaged by government shelling.
A spokesman for the observers, Neeraj Singh, said that the two observers who stayed on after Saturday’s tour “have now been deployed in Homs as of this evening.”
The advance team is to increase to 30 monitors this week, before the larger contingent arrives.
Under a preliminary agreement between the U.N. and the Syrian government, members of the enlarged mission will be able to walk and drive freely through the country. Syria, however, has not agreed to a U.N. demand that observers use their own planes and helicopters, a demand seen as a key to the mission’s success because it could reduce friction on the ground.
Information for this article was contributed from Beirut by Karin Laub and Bassem Mroue, and from the United Nations by Edith M. Lederer of The Associated Press; and from Beirut by Neil Macfarquhar and Hwaida Saad of The New York Times.