Syria opens front against rebels
BEIRUT -- Heavy gunfire and shelling rattled towns in a mountain valley outside Damascus on Wednesday, as Syrian troops opened a new front in their campaign to crush rebels who have taken control of areas around the capital.
The assault in the mountains overlooking Damascus from the northwest came a day after regime troops largely succeeded in retaking suburbs on the eastern side of the city in an offensive over the past week.
With activists reporting more than 30 killed in violence Wednesday, U.N. ambassadors held a second day of talks in a closed session at the Security Council, trying to win the agreement of Syria's ally Russia to a draft resolution calling for President Bashar Assad to surrender power.
Moscow says it would veto the draft because it believes it opens the way for eventual international military action. Western and Arab diplomats at a high-level Council session Monday that grouped U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the British and French foreign ministers insisted no such intervention was in the works.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hoped the Council will respond with a "unified voice," his spokesman Martin Nesirky said,
"He's concerned that as time passes, more people are being killed," Nesirky said.
The United Nations estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,400 people had been killed since March in the Assad regime's crackdown on the uprising. It has been unable to update its count since, and the bloodshed has continued. More than 300 were killed the past week alone.
The intensifying violence spurred pressure on Russia to allow U.N. action.
The London-based rights group Amnesty International sharply criticized Russia for what it called its "unconscionable" obstruction of U.N. efforts to help end the bloodshed in Syria.
"Russia bears a heavy responsibility for allowing the brutal crackdown on legitimate dissent in Syria to continue unchecked," Jose Luis Diaz, Amnesty International's U.N. representative, said Wednesday.
Russia has stood firmly by Assad throughout the nearly 11-month uprising. In October, Moscow and China cast a double veto on the first Security Council attempt to condemn Syria's crackdown. Russia has shown little sign of budging in its rejection of the new measure.
The latest resolution would demand Assad carry out an Arab League peace plan under which he would hand his powers over to the vice president and allow formation of a unity government to pave the way for elections.
Arab officials joined Western countries in trying to persuade Russia to back the measure.
Deputy Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed bin Helli said Wednesday the League sought the U.N. resolution to back its peace plan and boost an Arab solution for the crisis, not to bring in international military action.
The League "is still committed ... to solving this crisis in the Arab framework, away from any outside intervention," he said during a visit to Baghdad.
