UNITED NATIONS – Britain, France, Germany and Portugal have circulated a new draft UN resolution condemning Syria that drops previous calls for immediate sanctions against Damascus.
The scaled-back resolution, which is aimed at breaking a deadlock on the Security Council, includes the threat of future sanctions if the government of President Bashar al-Assad does not halt military operations against civilians.
In the town of Rastan, meanwhile, Syrian government forces backed by tanks and helicopters stormed in on Tuesday hoping to crush army deserters who are fighting back after months of mostly peaceful protests against Dr Assad, residents said.
Undeterred by the crackdown, more deserters declared the formation of another rebel military unit, of uncertain size, in the same area. And in a sign of increasingly heavily armed opposition to Dr Assad, people in the nearby city of Homs said rebel soldiers hit a government tank with a rocket.
Dozens of armoured vehicles entered Rastan, a town of 40,000 people on the Orontes river, north of Homs, after tanks and helicopters pounded it with heavy machineguns through the hours of darkness.
“Tanks closed in on Rastan overnight and the sound of machineguns and explosions has been non-stop. They finally entered this morning,” said a resident, Abu Qassem.
Hundreds of soldiers who have refused orders to fire on protesters have formed the Khaled Bin al-Walid battalion, named after the Arab conqueror of Syria, in Rastan. The force, led by Capt Abdelrahman Sheikh, has some tanks. Col Riad al-Asaad, the most senior military defector, is active in the area.
In the area of Houla, across the Orontes, thousands of villagers held an anti-Assad rally on Tuesday during which a new battalion of defectors was announced.Several soldiers in fatigues were seen in a YouTube video as a crowd chanted “Freedom!” Houla residents said they had attended the event.
The British ambassador in Damascus assailed the authorities for “violent suppression of mostly peaceful protests” and for systematically trying to hide the truth from the world.
“This is a regime that remains determined to control every significant aspect of political life in Syria. It is used to power. And it will do anything to keep it,” Simon Collis wrote in a blog.
At the UN, however, his government, and others with veto power on the Security Council, will go no further than verbal condemnation. The draft UN resolution, if passed, would have the 15-nation council voice “grave concern” at the situation in Syria and demand “an immediate end to all violence”.
If Damascus fails to heed the council’s demands, the draft resolution says the Security Council would “adopt targeted measures, including sanctions”. Last month, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Portugal circulated a draft resolution that called for sanctions against Dr Assad, influential members of his family and close associates. They said at the time that they wanted a vote as soon as possible, but that vote never came.
Veto-wielding council members Russia and China, as well as Brazil, India and South Africa, opposed the previous European and US draft sanctions resolution.
Western diplomats said that the new resolution would hopefully be more palatable to those five nations. They added that the new resolution was still quite strong, even if it did not include any punitive measures.
“We want to send a strong and unified message to ensure that the Assad regime does not remain deaf to the demands of the international community,” a European diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“We want to get the council to approve something quickly,” another diplomat said, adding that the new draft is “pretty threatening”. – (Reuters)