The UN Security Council yesterday demanded that Syria immediately implement a peace plan by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, even as the army pounded a rebel-held area of Homs, raising the death toll.
Following intense negotiations between the major powers, Russia and China signed on to a Western-drafted text which calls on President Bashar al-Assad to work toward a cessation of hostilities and a democratic transition.
The presidential statement, which carries less weight than a formal resolution, gives strong backing to a six-point plan that Annan put to Assad in talks in Damascus this month. It also gave a veiled warning of future international action.
But amid the UN debate, Syrian army troops rained shells on the Homs district of Khaldiyeh yesterday, as the toll from two days of bombardment rose to at least 19 dead and dozens wounded, activists said.
“Khaldiyeh is being bombed, with shells and rockets, for a second day,” Hadi Abdullah of the Syrian Revolution General Commission told AFP, reached by telephone from Beirut.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least five civilians were killed and dozens wounded yesterday’s shelling, a day after 14 civilians were killed in the same district. It said two children were among the latest deaths.
The Security Council statement called on “the Syrian government and opposition to work in good faith with the envoy towards a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis and to implement fully and immediately his initial six-point proposal.”
It said Mr Annan should regularly update the council on his efforts. “In the light of these reports, the Security Council will consider further steps as appropriate,” the statement adds.
The council also “expresses its full support” for Annan’s efforts to facilitate a Syrian-led transition to a “a democratic, plural political system”– which some diplomats said put additional political pressure on Annan.
In a sign of the new diplomatic urgency over Syria, the Security Council also agreed on a press statement, proposed by Russia, which “condemned in the strongest terms” bomb attacks in Damascus and Aleppo at the weekend.
Russia and China have vetoed two resolutions on Syria and their opposition to any tough action against Mr Assad has left the major powers in deadlock on ways to end the bloodshed in Syria, where the UN says well over 8,000 people have been killed in the last year.