Syria at ‘a tipping point,’ Annan says
Violence is at ‘tipping point’
WEDNESDAY, MAY 30, 2012 Opposition group says U.N. envoy’s attempt to reach truce with Bashar Assad is making situation worse,
CAIRO — Western nations expelled Syrian diplomats Tuesday as the rebellion opposing the regime of Bashar Assad insisted that only military force can stop the massacre of women and children in the town of Houla.
Burhan Ghalioun, president of the Syrian National Council opposition movement based in Berlin, said an attempt by United Nations envoy Kofi Annan to reach a truce is making things worse for innocent civilians being killed by the Assad regime.
“We protest the international silence in regards to the regime’s crimes,” Ghalioun said Tuesday. “Annan cannot continue his mission after the massacres that have taken place, visiting Damascus without batting an eyelash.”
The United States joined several other nations by expelling Syrian diplomats in protest of the killing of 108 people Friday by troops or pro-Assad militias in Houla. The U.N. human rights agency said most of the victims were women and children, and many were shot at close range in their own homes.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. holds “the Syrian government responsible for this slaughter.”
Numerous countries — including Australia, Britain, Canada, France and Germany — announced they were expelling Syrian diplomats.
Annan was in Damascus to meet with Assad, who has said in the past that the rebellion he faces is a foreign conspiracy of “thugs” and “terrorists.” The U.N. estimates 9,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011.
Rupert Colville, spokes- man for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said 34 women and 49 children were killed in Houla, and most were shot execution style, not from artillery shelling of rebel fighters.
The Syrian National Council called for a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing force to “stop the genocide.” The Security Council condemned the massacre in a non-binding resolution over the weekend.
“This is a problem and a black mark against the U.N.,” said Sami Ibrahim of the Syr- ian Network for Human Rights, speaking from Homs.
Activists said that even after the Houla massacre, the regime continued to violate a peace plan brokered by Annan last month.
According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights and the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, there were more than 317 violations of the plan on Monday, including artillery shelling.
Annan was head of U.N. peacekeeping forces from 1993 to 1996, at a time when 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica were killed while it was under U.N. protection. Annan was also in the position during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
Annan said he emphasized to Assad that he must step up efforts to halt the violence and abide by the peace plan.
“We are at a tipping point,” Annan said after a meeting with Assad. “The Syrian people do not want the future to be one of bloodshed and division.”
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, Syrian activist leaders declared the Annan plan a failure. “It’s giving cover to the Assad regime to continue its killing,” said Hussein Sayed, president of the Syrian Higher Revolutionary Council.
Syria analysts say it was always unlikely that Annan’s attempt to forge a peace plan would be a substitute for military intervention. Marina Ottoway, a Middle East analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Annan’s plan was “a necessary step” that was doomed to fail.
She said it was needed to convince the international community that “either we allow Assad to continue what he was doing, or there has to be a more forceful intervention.”
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, warned on Monday that Assad’s actions could trigger international military intervention, but that greater diplomatic pressure should be tried first.
The Obama administration opposes military intervention. White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that intervening “would lead to greater chaos, greater carnage.”
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said it was time to take military measures and arm the rebels to stop the “horrific” killings.
“After nearly a year and a half of slaughter, it is far past time for the United States to begin to lead and put an end to the Assad regime,” he said. “The Annan ‘peace’ plan — which President Obama still supports — has merely granted the Assad regime more time to execute its military onslaught.”