EU leaders failed to persuade Russia to drop its support for Syria yesterday, despite the massacre of dozens of women and children and worsening fighting on the ground.
Russia and China are refusing to fall in line with the international community and push President Assad to quit. The countries are the only members of the UN Security Council to have repeatedly barred attempts to formally condemn the Syrian Government.
After talks with President Putin in St Petersburg, Herman Van Rompuy, the EU President, admitted that the two sides “might have some divergent assessments” on the crisis. He said that the differences had to be overcome if civil war in Syria was to be averted.
Mr Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, the head of the EU Commission, acknowledged the stalemate at a press conference, saying that they and Mr Putin agreed that the UN envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan remained the best hope of ending the bloodshed. “We fully agree that the Annan plan as a whole provides the best opportunity to break the cycle of violence in Syria, avoiding a civil war and finding a peaceful, lasting solution,” Mr Van Rompuy said.
However, that plan is in tatters after the Houla massacre a week ago, in which suspected regime loyalists murdered 108 civilians, most of them women and children.
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A spokesman for the outgunned Syrian rebels said yesterday that his forces were no longer adhering to the Annan plan, but instead would protect their people from attacks by the regime. Major Sami al-Kurdi, referring to the Friday deadline given to President Assad to end violence or face the consequences, said: “We have decided to end our commitment to this [plan] and starting from that date we began defending our people.”
He added that the rebels wanted the UN truce monitors to become a more robust “peace enforcing mission” — either that or the international community should take “bold” decisions and impose a no-fly zone and a buffer zone to help to bring the Assad regime down.
But the EU leaders’ failure to secure Mr Putin’s backing makes any such bold initiative unlikely, especially as China — wary of pro-democracy uprisings on the 23rd anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations — warned the West against any intervention.
In an editorial in the influential People’s Daily, Beijing criticised the international community for the mass expulsion of Syrian diplomats after the Houla massacre and for attributing “the massacre to Syrian Government before the truth was fully established”.
“It is easy to imagine the turmoil that would occur should Syria erupt into all-out civil war, triggering Western military intervention, and what kind of chaotic situation that would lead to,” it said.
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However, the head of the Arab League, Nabil al-Arabi, is to ask the UN Secretary-Genera,Ban Ki Moon, this week to submit the Syria crisis to the Security Council, a move that could open the door to military intervention.
Arab League ministers met in Qatar on Saturday to urge the United Nations to refer the Annan plan to a “Chapter VII resolution”, which would allow the Security Council to take necessary measures, including military force, in response to threats to international peace.
On the ground, fighting has intensified, observers said, particularly in the rebel bastion of Idlib in the northwest. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 19 soldiers, 8 rebels and 19 civilians were killed in violence across Syria on Sunday. The previous day 89 people died, including 57 soldiers, the largest number of military casualties in a single day since the uprising broke out in March 2011. The opposition Syrian National Council said regime forces in Idlib were using “tanks, rocket launchers and artillery”.
Local charities said the international community had to do more to alleviate the dire humanitarian situation. The UN meets today to try to break the deadlock that has hampered efforts to distribute much-needed food, medicine and other supplies.
With Syrian authorities reluctant to open their doors to a greater foreign presence, the UN must negotiate an agreement so that it can implement its stalled £117 million plan to alleviate suffering. But aid workers say the process is too slow.
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A UK-based anaesthetist named only as Dr Mohammed, who has returned from working in a secret medical clinic near Homs, said that they had only basic supplies. “There are no painkillers. All we had was paracetamol. That’s nowhere near strong enough after surgery. We also had to face unpredictable things like machines not working properly. We had nothing supplied by the Red Crescent, nor by the UN, because the Government wouldn’t let them in,” he said. “People kept asking me: are you not speaking for us back in Britain? Don’t people know how much we are suffering?”
Additional reporting: Leo Lewis, Beijing; Deborah Haynes and Laura Pitel