adminReports of the massacre in the village of Tremseh came after the Security Council envoys held their first talks on rival Russian and Western draft resolutions on Syria, with Moscow spurning calls for sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Syrian National Council (SNC), the main opposition bloc, said yester-day: “To stop this bloody madness which threatens the entity of Syria, as well as peace and the security in the region and in the world, requires an urgent and sharp resolution of the Security Council under Chapter VII (of the UN Charter) which protects the Syrian people.”
Chapter VII allows for punitive measures against regimes considered a threat to the peace, including economic sanctions and military intervention.
“We expect members of the Security Council to assume total responsibility to protect defenceless Syrians against these shameful crimes,” said the SNC, which added that the latest killings ranked “among the more infamous genocides of the Syrian regime”.
Rights activists and monitors said Syrian troops with tanks and helicopters slaughtered more than 150 people on Thursday, while a rebel leader put the toll at more than 200.
If confirmed, the killing at Tremseh would rival the massacre at Houla on 25 May, when a pro-Assad militia and government forces were accused of killing at least 108 people.
Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that the bodies of 30 villagers had already been identified following the sustained attack.
Sana state news agency said “bloodthirsty media in collaboration with armed terrorists massacred residents of Tremseh village” to provoke international intervention on the eve of a UN Security Council meeting.
Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood, a bloc within the SNC, said UN-Arab League envoy to Syria Kofi Annan and Syrian allies Iran and Russia must shoulder the blame for the killings too.
“We don’t consider the monster Bashar as being solely responsible for this heinous crime . . . but (also) Kofi Annan, the Russians and the Iranians and all countries which pretend to be guardians of peace and stability in the world but who remain silent,” the Brotherhood said in a statement on Friday.
Annan has been sharply criticised by Syria’s opposition in exile and activists on the ground, accusing him of treating the victim and aggressor in the country’s brutal conflict on the same terms.
Annan on Monday will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for talks on the crisis in Syria,
Russian news agencies reported.
“The talks will focus on the current situation in Syria and the chances of an internal Syrian solution,” a
Russian foreign ministry source, who was not named, told the ITAR-TASS news agency.
The talks would most likely touch on a UN resolution that would extend the mandate of the UN mission in Syria, said the source.
Talks between Russia and world powers at the United Nations have already been dogged by disputes, with Russia proposing its own resolution that the West said fell short of expectations.
In turn, Russia has condemned a Western-backed draft resolution as “unacceptable” as it outlines sanctions against Assad.
More than four months on from his appointment, Annan has proved powerless to end the violence that monitors say has cost 17 000 lives, mostly civilians, since the anti-Assad uprising broke out in March 2011, at first with peaceful protests.
The former UN chief brokered a six-point peace plan in March calling for an inclusive political process, a ceasefire, humanitarian assistance, release of arbitrarily detained persons, freedom of movement for journalists, and to allow peaceful demonstrations. — Al Jazeera.
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