Turkey demands Syria safe havens

31 Aug 2012, 1:00 pm   -   Source: AAP
Turkey has demanded world powers help them cope with the massive volumes of Syrian refugees. (AAP)

Turkey has demanded world powers help them cope with the massive volumes of Syrian refugees. (AAP)

War-torn Syria's frustrated neighbour Turkey has demanded world powers set up refugee camps within the country to stem the massive outflow of refugees.

War-torn Syria's frustrated neighbour Turkey has demanded world powers set up refugee camps within the country to stem the massive outflow of refugees.

Syrian rebels are meanwhile claiming to have downed a regime jet, underlining the mounting ferocity of the civil war, with ministers meeting at the United Nations to seek ways to deal with a looming humanitarian catastrophe.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the UN Security Council on Thursday to act "without delay" to set up safe havens, warning that 80,000 Syrians are already in camps in Turkey, with 4000 crossing the border each day.

"How long are we going to sit and watch while an entire generation is being wiped out by random bombardment and deliberate mass targeting?" demanded Davutoglu, slamming the Security Council's failure to agree action on Syria.

"Let's not forget that if we do not act against such a crime against humanity happening in front of our eyes, we become accomplices to the crime."

The opposition Syrian National Council also renewed its call for the Security Council to impose no-fly zones on Syria to even the odds on the battlefield, where only the regime has access to air power.

But France and Britain warned that the envoys meeting at UN headquarters in New York were unlikely to reach an agreement on safe zones, as this would imply authorising a highly controversial protective military operation.

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague held a joint news conference with France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to warn there are "considerable difficulties" with the idea of protected enclaves for civilians.

"We are excluding no option for the future. We do not know how this crisis will develop," Hague said. "It is steadily getting worse. We are ruling nothing out, we have contingency planning for a wide range of scenarios.

"But we also have to be clear that anything like a safe zone requires military intervention and that of course is something that has to be weighed very carefully."

UN Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson warned that the calls for humanitarian corridors "raise serious questions and require careful and critical consideration".

The Security Council remains bitterly divided over how to deal with the 17-month-old conflict, which has split the country into warring pro- and anti-regime camps and which rights groups say has left 25,000 dead.

Meanwhile, a rebel Free Syrian Army chief for Idlib province, Colonel Afif Mahmoud Suleiman, said on Thursday: "A MiG was shot down this morning by our men using automatic weapons, shortly after taking off from Abu Zohur military airport."

The regime has acknowledged two previous aircraft crashes but put them down to mechanical failures. It made no immediate comment on the latest claim.

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