June 3, 2012 – World leaders voiced shared fears on Friday that Syria stands on the brink of all-out civil war but found little agreement on how to bring it back from the abyss. Talks in Berlin between German Chancellor, Angela Merkel and Russian President, Vladimir Putin exposed the sharp differences between Arab and Western governments and Damascus allies, Beijing and Moscow on the way forward.
The two leaders found common ground on backing the peace mission of United Nations-Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan but the former UN chief himself admitted to frustration at the slow progress he was making in staunching the bloodshed, as human rights monitors reported another 15 people dead.
Security forces opened fire on demonstrators in several towns as protests were held across the country against the killing of 108 people, most of them women and children, near the central town of Houla last week, activists said. UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay said the killings — which UN officials have said were the result of army shelling followed by a ground assault by loyalist militia – could constitute a “crime against humanity.” An inquiry by the Syrian government blamed rebel fighters but Washington dismissed its finding as a “blatant lie.” After his talks in Berlin, the Russian president acknowledged that Syria could be teetering on the edge of civil war but underlined his opposition to military intervention to stop the bloodshed. “You cannot do anything by force,” Putin told reporters. He hit back at suggestions that Moscow was supplying arms for use in Syria, saying his country did not deliver weapons to be deployed in civil conflicts. “As far as arms supplies are concerned, Russia does not supply the weapons that could be used in a civil conflict,” he said. The president, on his first trip to the West since returning to the Kremlin for a third term, insisted his country was not siding with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime against the opposition.
“We are supporting neither side from which the danger of civil war is coming,” he said. Merkel said the two leaders had agreed on the importance of backing Annan’s peace mission. “We both made it clear that we are pushing for a political solution, that the Annan plan can be a starting point but that everything must be done in the United Nations Security Council to implement this plan,” she said. But speaking in Lebanon, on Friday, Annan spoke of his frustration at the slow progress in implementing his six-point peace plan that was supposed to begin with a ceasefire from April 12 but which has been violated daily.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that a full 2,287 of the more than 13,400 people killed since the uprising against Assad’s regime began in March last year have died since the nominal start of the truce. “We are all impatient and frustrated over the violence, over the killings. I am frustrated even more maybe than most of you. “I really want to see things move much faster than they have done,” he told reporters in Beirut. “Bold action has to be taken by President Assad in Syria to put real energy into the implementation of the six-point peace plan,” said Annan.
