Iran's Salehi meets Syrian president

20 Sep 2012, 6:05 am   -   Source: AAP
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Iran's foreign minister has met Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with the hopes a solution can be found to the conflict in the country.

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Iran's foreign minister has met embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, as a rights watchdog accused Damascus of waging "relentless, indiscriminate" attacks against its own people.

Speaking on arrival at Damascus airport on Wednesday, Ali Akbar Salehi said a solution to the 18-month conflict in the country lies "only in Syria and within the Syrian family".

Salehi, who called this week for a simultaneous halt to the fighting by both regime and rebel forces, added this should be done in "partnership with international and regional organisations."

But Amnesty International, the London-based rights group, accused the Damascus regime of waging "relentless, indiscriminate" attacks against its own people.

And the former head of Syria's chemical arsenal, Major General Adnan Sillu, was quoted by British newspaper The Times as saying he believed the regime would eventually use those weapons against civilians.

Salehi, quoted by Syrian state news agency SANA, said the country was "facing a problem, and we hope that this problem can be solved as soon as possible."

The minister said "Syria has very strong, solid ties with Iran, especially at the political level," and that he would discuss the conflict with Syrian officials.

"We will be consulting on all political aspects of this problem that Syria is facing," he said.

Salehi's call for an end to fighting came at a meeting in Cairo on Monday of the Syria "contact group," to which Iran, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey belong.

Tehran, a staunch ally of the regime in Damascus, is also proposing the four countries dispatch observers to Syria in an effort to quell the violence.

Last month, the United Nations withdrew its own observers after both sides failed to respect an April ceasefire to which they had committed themselves.

Iran has strenuously denied accusations it is providing military aid to Assad's regime.

In turn, it accuses the West and several regional countries - notably Saudi Arabia and Turkey - of providing military and financial assistance to Syrian rebels.

In a statement, Amnesty said "civilians, many of them children, are the main victims of a campaign of relentless and indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian army."

It said it had new evidence "of a pattern which has emerged in recent weeks in areas where government forces, pushed into retreat by opposition forces, are now indiscriminately bombing and shelling lost territory - with disastrous consequences for the civilian population."

And The Times quoted defected Major General Sillu as saying he had been involved in "serious discussion about the use of chemical weapons, including how we would use them and in what areas."

Sillu said he defected three months ago after being party to the top-level talks about the use of chemical weapons against both rebels and civilians.

"We discussed this as a last resort - such as if the regime lost control of an important area such as Aleppo," he was quoted as saying.

Sillu said he was convinced the regime would eventually use such weapons against civilians, and that the discussion had been "the last straw" which triggered his defection.

Meanwhile, rebels withdrew from three southern districts of Damascus after weeks of heavy combat and shelling, as fighting raged on in the second city, Aleppo, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A network of activists, the Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC), described as "disaster areas" the Al-Hajar al-Aswad, Qadam and Assali districts, and the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp.

"Since July 15, these neighbourhoods have suffered fierce army assaults, as well as indiscriminate shelling targeting civilian homes and shops," it said.

"People who fled the violence in search of safety have paid the highest price," it added.

The SRGC accused the regime of "carrying out a series of summary executions" in the south of the capital, adding at least 200 people have been killed in the afflicted districts since the outbreak of violence there mid-summer.

It appealed to international agencies, particularly the Red Cross and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to "help the residents of these disaster areas, and to immediately come to help... document the regime's crimes."

The Observatory said dozens of people were killed or wounded in shelling in Sahl al-Ghab in the central province of Hama, but that it had so far only been able to document nine deaths.

And regime forces killed a woman at her home in the coastal city of Latakia when she tried to stop them from arresting her son, the Observatory said.

In Aleppo, where the two-month-old battle for control of the commercial capital remains fluid, the army said rebels attacked several military positions in the east overnight and that helicopter gunships eventually drove them off.

They also again assaulted the local headquarters of the feared air force intelligence agency, but without success.

The Observatory said there was shelling in several eastern districts of the city.

The Observatory said 32 people had been killed nationwide so far on Wednesday, including 27 civilians, after 173 died the previous day.

It says more than 27,000 people have died since the uprising erupted in March 2011, while the United Nations puts the figure at more than 20,000.

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Your Comments

freedom!

bob marley - from melbourne, 8 months ago

the media never points out that the majority of the syrian people still support the governement. That the groups fighting the governement are mercenaries that are funded by countries in the gulf, that clearly have their own agenda. The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.- Malcom X

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