* Annan’s deputy urges swift deployment of extra observers
* China says seriously studying idea of sending observers
* Sarkozy calls for setting tp ‘humanitarian corridors’
* ‘Friends of Syria’ ministers to meet in Paris
* Shooting after U.N. observers leave town
(Adds U.S. and Russian U.N. envoys)
By Oliver Holmes and Louis Charbonneau
BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS, April 19 (Reuters) – Syria and the
United Nations signed an agreement on Thursday on terms for
hundreds of observers to monitor a ceasefire, but fierce
diplomatic wrangling lies ahead to persuade the West the mission
can have the authority and power to ensure peace.
A handful of U.N. observers are already in Syria monitoring
a week-old truce that has failed to stop bloodshed. The question
of whether the mission can expand while violence continues is up
in the air. A crowd mobbed the head of the advance party on
Thursday, some demanding the death of President Bashar al-Assad.
The U.N. Security Council – divided between Western
countries that want to topple Assad and Russia and China, which
support him – must agree the proposal to send a larger observer
force. Russia made clear it wants the 15-member council to move
now to expand the small mission, while the West is hesitating.
Senior officials from France, the United States, Britain and
other Western states met in Paris with Middle East countries
including Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. They agreed the truce
was the “last hope” of avoiding an all-out civil war. But Russia
snubbed an invitation and derided the “Friends of Syria”
meeting.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the group in
Paris that they should push for a Security Council resolution to
impose U.N. sanctions on Assad if he blocked an adequate peace
monitoring mission. She said Russia, while still likely to veto
such a measure now, might support one if violence went on.
In the first progress report since the council authorised
the arrival of the initial observers on Saturday, U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Syria had not fully withdrawn
troops and heavy weapons from towns as agreed, failing to send a
“clear signal” about its commitment to peace. He also
recommended raising the number of observers to up to 300.
On Thursday, the Security Council was briefed by mediator
Kofi Annan’s deputy, Jean-Marie Guehenno. According to council
diplomats, Guehenno acknowledged risks of deploying unarmed
observers while violence persists, but said their presence could
help by changing the political dynamics on the ground.
This view was shared by Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly
Churkin, who said “we need to respond to (Ban’s) request, to his
proposal to authorize the full-fledged monitoring mission.”
“For a cessation of violence to be firmed up, the further
deployment of the monitoring mission could play a very important
role,” he said.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, however, said some countries had
concerns about the fact that Damascus had not ended the violence
and had not granted the observers full freedom of movement.
FIG-LEAF FEARS
Assad’s opponents fear that a small observer mission with a
weak mandate would act as little more than a fig leaf for the
government, blocking more robust intervention to halt a 13-month
crackdown on cities that have risen up against Assad.
But the main opposition group, the Syrian National Council,
welcomed the observers’ mission and said in a statement that
more monitors must be deployed to serve as witnesses.
“Their presence allows the civilian population to reassert
its right to peaceful demonstration,” the group said.
U.S. and European diplomats on the council have suggested
Syria’s lack of full compliance with the ceasefire might make it
hard for them to back an expanded mission. Russia and China will
approve a mission only under a part of the U.N. charter that
gives Assad’s government a veto over the observers’ mandate.
Discussion has focused on a force of at most a few hundred
people, a tiny fraction of the size of peacekeeping forces have
normally deployed to war zones.
“This preliminary agreement … aims to facilitate the task
of the observers within the framework of Syrian sovereignty,” a
statement from the Syrian Foreign Ministry said.
The U.N. advance team in Syria has already had a taste of
the unrest. On Wednesday, gunfire erupted close to the
observers, who had been swarmed by anti-Assad protesters near
Damascus.
On Thursday the team went to a rural area near the town of
Deraa, where the uprising against Assad began. Amateur video
footage posted on the Internet showed the team’s head, Colonel
Ahmed Himmiche, wearing a U.N.-style turquoise bullet-proof vest
as he walks through a crowd of protesters.
A demonstrator wraps his arm around Himmiche and shouts:
“The people want the execution of Bashar.” Himmiche, who must
act as a neutral observer, looks ill at ease.
The United Nations estimates Assad’s forces have killed more
than 9,000 people in the uprising. Syria says foreign-backed
militants have killed more than 2,600 soldiers and police.
NO AIRCRAFT
The last mission by outside monitors to observe a peace plan
in Syria, sent by the Arab League, collapsed in failure in
January after just a month. That team said it could do little as
long as Assad’s forces controlled its movements.
Ban has asked for any new U.N. mission to have its own
aircraft so it can travel independently, but Syria says it will
provide transport. Ban told reporters U.N. aircraft were not
covered in the preliminary deal and were still being discussed.
The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said
Syrian forces opened fire in the town of Herak, in southern
Syria, shortly after the U.N. team left the area on Thursday.
It added that six people had been killed around Syria on
Thursday, including two during army shelling in Homs.
Regarding Ban’s recommendation for 300 observers, Syrian
Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said 250 was a “reasonable
number”, adding they should be from countries such as China,
Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa – all more sympathetic to
Damascus than are the West and the Arab League.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said Beijing
was “seriously studying” participating.
RUSSIA SCOLDS ‘FRIENDS OF SYRIA’
The informal “Friends of Syria” group said in a statement in
Paris: “Every day that passes means dozens of new Syrian
civilian deaths.
“It is not time to prevaricate. It is time to act… Though
fragile, the Annan mission represents a last hope.”
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told the meeting: “We
cannot wait, time is short … The observers must be deployed
fast and must be able to act without obstacles.”
Clinton told the meeting that the Security Council should
adopt “travel, financial sanctions, an arms embargo, and the
pressure that that will give us on the regime to push for
compliance with Kofi Annan’s six-point plan.”
Russia, angered by a U.N. resolution that led to war in
Libya last year, opposes sanctions and says the West and Arab
powers are failing to give due weight to Assad’s argument that
he is fighting Islamist militants.
“When the so-called Syrian group of friends meet and
somebody says ‘Now we’ll assess how Assad implements Kofi
Annan’s plan’, it is a wrong attempt,” Russian Foreign Minister
Sergei Lavrov said at a NATO meeting in Brussels. “We cannot
privatize (the plan) and we will not let it happen.”
Clinton said of her talks with Lavrov in Brussels: “He was,
as usual, very intent upon laying responsibility on all sides,
and in particular on the opposition. But he also has recognized
that we are not in a static situation but a deteriorating one.”
Western powers have little appetite for Libya-style military
intervention in Syria.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, facing the first round of
an uphill re-election battle on Sunday, said the solution for
the crisis in Syria would be to set up a humanitarian corridor
that would allow the opposition to survive.
Assad “wants to wipe Homs off the map just like Gaddafi
wanted to destroy Benghazi”, said Sarkozy, whose lead in backing
Libya’s rebels against Muammar Gaddafi last year won him praise
at home and abroad. “We called this meeting to gather all those
who cannot stand that a dictator is killing his people.”
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, John Irish and Daniel
Flynn in Paris, Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Ben
Blanchard in Beijing, Sebastian Moffet and Arshad Mohammed in
Brussels, and Michelle Nichols in New York: writing by Oliver
Holmes; editing by Peter Graff and Mohammad Zargham)
