Ban urges Security Council to act on Syria

ABU DHABI — The UN chief said yesterday he hoped the Security Council will act together to resolve the crisis in Syria, and urged the current Arab League observer mission there to continue its work.

President Bashar al Assad’s response to the uprising against his rule has killed more than 5,000 people, by a UN count. Syrian authorities say 2,000 members of the security forces have also been killed.

“I hope the UN Security Council handles Syria in a coherent manner and with a sense of gravity,” Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said on a visit to Abu Dhabi, echoing a previous call for the council to speak with “one voice” on Syria.

“The casualties have reached such an unacceptable stage we cannot let the situation continue this way,” Ban said. “I highly appreciate the League of Arab States engaging in discussions with President Assad. I sincerely hope they carry on and they need to have a clear sense of action.”

Arab League foreign ministers are due to meet later this month to discuss the future of a monitoring mission sent last month to check if Syria is respecting an Arab peace plan.

Ban repeated his call for Assad to “stop killing, and listen to his people”.

Eleven people were killed in Syria yesterday.

Random gunfire from proAssad militiamen killed five people, including a woman, and wounded nine in the restive city of Homs, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It said five soldiers were killed when they tried to change sides during a clash with dissidents in the northwestern province of Idlib, adding that 15 soldiers had succeeded in defecting.

The state news agency Sana said an “armed terrorist group” had shot dead Brigadier-general Mohammed Abdul-hamid al Awad and wounded his driver in the countryside near Damascus.

The head of the Arab monitoring mission is due to report to an Arab League committee on Thursday before Arab foreign ministers gather to consider their next step on Syria.

Qatar, which heads the committee, has suggested Arab troops step in, an idea that is anathema to Damascus and which Arab nations such as Iraq, Lebanon and Algeria are likely to oppose.

The League could also refer Syria to the UN Security Coun- cil if it concludes that its own peace effort has failed.

The council has been paralysed so far because Russia and China oppose any resolution that could lead to UN sanctions or Western military action against Syria.

There is little Western appetite for any Libya-style intervention. The United States, the European Union, Turkey and the Arab League have announced economic sanctions against Syria.

On Sunday Assad proclaimed the latest of several amnesties for “crimes” committed during the uprising and some prisoners were later freed in the presence of Arab monitors in Damascus.

Kinan al Shami, of the Syrian Revolution Coordination Union, said hundreds of detainees appeared to have been released, but they represented only a frac- tion of at least 40,000 people he said had been jailed without charge since March, many of whom have been held in secret police buildings or makeshift prisons.

Among those freed, Shami said, was Syrian actor Jalal al Tawil who was shot and captured while trying to flee to Jordan two weeks ago. He had earlier been beaten in a Damascus protest.

The movement to end more than four decades of Assad rule began with largely peaceful demonstrations, but after months of violence by the security forces, army deserters and insurgents started to fight back, prompting fears of civil war.

The northern commercial city of Aleppo, like central parts of the capital Damascus, has mostly escaped the turmoil, but security forces stormed Aleppo University campus overnight in pursuit of students who staged an anti-assad protest on Friday.

Activists said dozens of students were beaten in the raid in which students who belong to a pro-assad militia also took part.

Aleppo residents say big merchants in the city still support Assad and that the authorities have also recruited tribesmen from the countryside to patrol the streets.

The president, 46, who appeared in public twice in as many days last week, is eager to show that his people love him.

Sana, the state news agency, reported on Sunday that a 10 km long letter, which it billed as the world’s longest, was being written and signed by Syrians across the country as a “message of loyalty to the homeland and its leader”. — Reuters