Russia said the chances of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad staying in power were growing “smaller and smaller ” as fighting yesterday in southwestern Damascus closed a main highway from the capital.
Assad’s air power and army have stemmed rebel advances
Assad has long counted Moscow as an ally and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s remarks were the most vocal Russian statement yet that his days may now be numbered, although they come after predictions from France, an avowed enemy, and from neighbouring Jordan that the Syrian President’s downfall is not at all imminent.
“I think that with every day, every week and every month, the chances of his preservation are getting smaller and smaller,” Medvedev said, according to the transcript of an interview in Russian with CNN that was released by his office.
“But I repeat again, this must be decided by the Syrian people. Not Russia, not the United States, nor any other country,” said Medvedev, whose administration has criticised Western, Turkish and Gulf Arab support for Syria’s rebels.
After Egypt’s veteran President Hosni Mubarak was toppled, Russia withheld its veto on a UN Security Council resolution authorising Western and Arab powers to provide military help to the rebels who overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in neighbouring Libya.
Moscow has accused the West of breaching sovereign rights and has vetoed UN action against Assad. Medvedev warned that removing Assad by force would mean “decades” of civil war.
Russia has been Assad’s most important ally in the 22-month-old Syrian conflict. Moscow has blocked three Security Council resolutions aimed at pushing him out or pressuring him to end the bloodshed.
But Russia has also said it is not trying to prop Assad up and will not offer him asylum.
The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels have seized territory in the north of the country, including several border crossings, and have challenged Assad’s control over Syria’s main cities.But Assad’s air power and army have stemmed rebel advances.
Activists said rebels clashed with forces loyal to Assad in southwestern Damascus yesterday, seizing a railway station and forcing the closure of the main highway to Deraa in the south.
Footage posted on the internet showed what activists said was a rebel attack on the station in Qadam district.
One clip showed gunmen taking cover as gunfire could be heard. Another showed gunmen inspecting buildings by the track after what the narrator describes as the “liberation” of the station.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition group which monitors the violence in Syria, said jets and artillery also struck targets in rebel strongholds to the east and south of the capital after fierce clashes there.
The fighting came as United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos visited Syria before a UN aid conference in Kuwait, which aims to raise $1.5 billion for millions of people made homeless, hungry and vulnerable by the conflict.
France said on Thursday there was no sign Assad was about to be overthrown, reversing previous statements that he could not hold out long, and Jordan’s King Abdullah said Assad would consolidate his grip for now.
“Anybody saying Bashar has got weeks to live really doesn’t know the reality on the ground,” Abdullah said in Davos on Friday. “They still have capability, so I give them a strong shot at least for the first half of 2013.”
On Wednesday, Amos said Syrians were “paying a terrible price” for the failure of world powers to resolve the conflict, pointing to 650,000 refugees who have fled the country and the millions affected inside Syria.
“Four million people need help, two million are internally displaced and 400,000 out of 500,000 Palestinian refugees have been affected,” she told the economic forum in Switzerland.
The United Nations and aid groups inside Syria, including the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, could not keep pace with the rising number of people in need, she said.
“We must find ways to reach more people, especially in the areas we are still unable to get to, and where there is ongoing fighting,” she said.
Most of the money from the Kuwait conference will go to support neighbouring countries hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees, while $519 million is earmarked for aid inside Syria.
The fighting has alarmed neighbouring Israel, where Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said that any sign that Syria’s grip on its chemical weapons was slipping could trigger Israeli military strikes, especially if Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerillas or Syrian rebels obtained the chemical weapons.