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Syrian rebels launch new attack on Assad's strongholds
By Ruth Sherlock, The Daily Telegraph June 6, 2012
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Families leave their homes in Taldou, near Houla, following last week's massacre, June 5, 2012. Picture taken June 5, 2012.
Photograph by: Saria Al Holany/Handout , Reuters
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was under mounting pressure at home and abroad Wednesday as rebels attacked his chief strongholds and Washington threatened his regime with UN sanctions.
U.S. officials launched a fresh campaign to rally international support for a UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against the Assad regime.
Timothy Geithner, the U.S. treasury secretary, called for the world to exert "maximum financial pressure" on Syria and indicated that U.S. diplomats would seek a resolution under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter,
Previous attempts to pass Security Council resolutions have failed after they were vetoed by Russia and China.
Although Russia this week indicated for the first time that it could accept a peace deal that would see Mr Assad step down, its co-operation in the Security Council will be hard to secure. Russia fears such a resolution would be a prelude to enforced regime change.
Heavy fighting was reported in the Harasta district of Damascus yesterday as rebels attacked an intelligence building and checkpoints. Similar operations were mounted in three of the capital's satellite towns. Government forces were also said to have suffered heavy casualties during clashes in Haffe, a town in the loyalist heartland of Latakia province.
Opposition fighters have declared that the ceasefire brokered by Kofi Annan, the peace envoy, has collapsed. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 168 government soldiers have been killed in the past week.
Meanwhile, Damascus appointed a loyalist Baath party member, former agriculture minister Riad Farid Hijab as Prime Minister, despite promising in the last general elections to include politicians from other parties in the government.
It proved the last straw for Italian foreign minister Giulio Terzi who declared that without rapid intervention the Syrian President's policies risked causing "a genocide" in Syria.
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has travelled to Turkey to meet with 15 regional and European allies to work on ways to win suport from Russia, which has twice blocked UN resolutions on Syria.
She threw cold water on a Russian proposal for a meeting on Syria that would include Iran, saying it was "a little hard to imagine inviting a country that is stage-managing the Assad regime's assault on its people."
Syrian rebels launch new attack on Assad's strongholds
By Ruth Sherlock, The Daily Telegraph June 6, 2012
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Families leave their homes in Taldou, near Houla, following last week's massacre, June 5, 2012. Picture taken June 5, 2012.
Photograph by: Saria Al Holany/Handout , Reuters
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria was under mounting pressure at home and abroad Wednesday as rebels attacked his chief strongholds and Washington threatened his regime with UN sanctions.
U.S. officials launched a fresh campaign to rally international support for a UN Security Council resolution imposing sanctions against the Assad regime.
Timothy Geithner, the U.S. treasury secretary, called for the world to exert "maximum financial pressure" on Syria and indicated that U.S. diplomats would seek a resolution under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter,
Previous attempts to pass Security Council resolutions have failed after they were vetoed by Russia and China.
Although Russia this week indicated for the first time that it could accept a peace deal that would see Mr Assad step down, its co-operation in the Security Council will be hard to secure. Russia fears such a resolution would be a prelude to enforced regime change.
Heavy fighting was reported in the Harasta district of Damascus yesterday as rebels attacked an intelligence building and checkpoints. Similar operations were mounted in three of the capital's satellite towns. Government forces were also said to have suffered heavy casualties during clashes in Haffe, a town in the loyalist heartland of Latakia province.
Opposition fighters have declared that the ceasefire brokered by Kofi Annan, the peace envoy, has collapsed. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 168 government soldiers have been killed in the past week.
Meanwhile, Damascus appointed a loyalist Baath party member, former agriculture minister Riad Farid Hijab as Prime Minister, despite promising in the last general elections to include politicians from other parties in the government.
It proved the last straw for Italian foreign minister Giulio Terzi who declared that without rapid intervention the Syrian President's policies risked causing "a genocide" in Syria.
U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has travelled to Turkey to meet with 15 regional and European allies to work on ways to win suport from Russia, which has twice blocked UN resolutions on Syria.
She threw cold water on a Russian proposal for a meeting on Syria that would include Iran, saying it was "a little hard to imagine inviting a country that is stage-managing the Assad regime's assault on its people."