Annan to approach world powers for new strategy for Syria

NEW YORK: Against the backdrop of a new massacre in Syria, international envoy Kofi Annan was planning today to ask a group of world powers and key regional players including Iran to come up with a strategy to end the 15-month conflict, UN diplomats said.

Annan would present the UN with a plan for creating a “contact group” whose final proposal must be acceptable to Syria’s allies Russia and China, which have blocked all UN action, as well as the US and its European allies, who insist that President Bashar al-Assad must go, they said.

There had also been talk about a meeting of key world leaders on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Mexico later this month to discuss the growing crisis in Syria and possible next steps, the diplomats said.

“It’s time for all of us to turn our attention to an orderly transition of power in Syria that would pave the way for democratic, tolerant, pluralistic future,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters yesterday before leaving Azerbaijan for Turkey.

The violence in Syria has grown increasingly chaotic in recent months, and it is difficult to assign blame for much of the bloodshed.

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

The opposition blames government forces and militias that support them while the government blames rebels and “armed terrorist groups”.

At the UN, diplomats are concerned the country is spiralling towards civil war.

Annan, the joint UN-Arab League envoy, will give his latest assessment of the Syrian conflict at an open meeting of the UN General Assembly today along with UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon, Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby, and a representative of UN human rights chief Navi Pillay.

Annan will then brief the UN Security Council behind closed doors this afternoon and have dinner with ambassadors from the council’s five permanent nations – the US, Russia, China, Britain and France.

Reports by Syrian activists of a surge of bloodshed in the central Hama province late yesterday, with at least 23 people killed – and possibly many more – are bound to reinforce the growing belief Annan’s peace plan is unravelling.

The violence comes on the heels of a horrific massacre on May 25 and 26 in Houla, a cluster of villages in the central Homs province, which left more than 100 dead including many women and children gunned down in their homes.

UN investigators blamed pro-government gunmen for some of the killings but the Syrian regime blamed rebels for the attacks.

US Ambassador Susan Rice warned last week the most probable scenario in Syria is a failure of Annan’s peace plan and a spreading conflict that creates “a major crisis” in the region. – Sapa-AP