Syrian opposition warns outside military intervention may be ‘only solution’ to crisis
Alex Spillius, Damien McElroy, Telegraph, Feb 22 2012
The first “Friends of Syria” meeting due to be held on Friday in Tunis is likely to see further calls for financial and technical assistance to be provided to the armed Syrian resistance, if not yet for outright intervention from either NATO or Arab League forces. Bassma Kodmani, a senior figure in the SNC, on Wednesday suggested her group was close to abandoning its opposition to such action. She told a press conference:
We are really close to seeing this military intervention as the only solution. There are two evils, military intervention or protracted civil war. Without progress on the political front, the Friends of Syria should allow individual members to support the opposition logistically, technically or militarily. There is a humanitarian emergency. The world has not responded to this emergency adequately. The people in Syria feel abandoned. They feel they are being let down by the world.
Washington has already hinted that it may be willing to pursue such an option. On Wednesday Russian Pres Medvedev and Iranian Pres Ahmadinejad discussed the crisis in a telephone call, but agreed to reject foreign intervention in Syria. A Kremlin statement said:
The sides spoke out in favour of the quickest resolution of the crisis by the Syrian people themselves through exclusively peaceful means and without foreign intervention.
The SNC will ask the conference to support a seven-point plan for establishing humanitarian corridors to cities and surrounding areas where food, water and electricity are becoming scarce. It proposes establishing safe passages from Lebanon to Homs, from Turkey to Idlib and from Jordan to Deraa. Russia, one of the regime’s few remaining allies, said it now supported a Red Cross proposal to allow limited daily access for aid convoys, though not fully fledged corridors. Foreign ministry spokesman Lukashevich said:
Our initiative is aimed at providing safety of humanitarian cargo deliveries. We are actively working with Syria and countries around it.
Deputy foreign minister Gatilov was however quick to underline his government’s hostility towards the Friends of Syria meeting, which Russia will not attend, for failing to invite representatives of the Syrian government. Louay Hussein, one of Syria’s leading dissidents, said the opposition inside the country felt abandoned by the international community as the regime had become even more brutal since the failure of the UN resolution. He said on a visit to London:
No one is able to predict how bad it will become in Syria. The regime is moving further and further away from diplomacy. It is refusing to consider any political initiative.
A senior Western official said:
Russia is still not exerting any meaningful pressure on the Assad regime. We would like Russia to be part of the solution but they are not presenting themselves as such. They are delaying diplomacy to help Assad carry out the level of atrocities he is undertaking. The SNC’s lack of cohesion meanwhile remains a stumbling block. The SNC is the group that has the momentum but it is far from, and doesn’t claim to be, the only representative of the opposition. We want to push for a coming together of those groups, perhaps through a Congress, so that there is a collective moving forward. We would like to see a shared statement of principles and secondly some kind of transition plan for a viable political future.
Meanwhile, The EU is set to impose fresh sanctions on Syria, including a ban on Syrian-run cargo flights into the 27-nation bloc, EU diplomats said yesterday. Other measures include a freeze on the European assets of the Syrian central bank and restrictions on trade in gold and precious metals.
