World must 'hear screams' from SyriaThe world must urgently 'hear the screams" from Syria and do something to stop the bloodshed, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister has said.
Syria is 'like a civil war'
A pro-Syrian regime protester waves a Syrian flag from a fountain during a demonstration in Damascus Photo: AP
By Richard Spencer, Adrian Blomfield and Alex Spillius
3:33PM GMT 17 Nov 2011
Turkey said it was seeking new transport routes to the Middle East that would bypass the increasingly politically isolated country.
Mr Erdogan said measures must be taken for the safety of energy supplies as well as global peace. Mr Erdogan, speaking at an international energy conference in Istanbul, did not specify any possible actions over Syrian President Bashar Assad's brutal repression of the country's 8-month-old uprising.
However, he called on the international community to be sensitive to the plight of Syrian people as much as they were to the uprising in oil-rich Libya, saying "the lack of reaction to massacres in Syria was causing irreparable wounds in the conscience of humanity."
"No doubt, the problems both in Syria and in the Middle East in general are global problems," he said. "Therefore, we have to see the tragedy in the area, hear the screams and urgently take measures to stop the bloodshed for the safety of energy supplies as much as global peace and calm."
He added: "Syria may not be attracting attention as much as Libya because it has not enough oil."
"But I want to stress that those killed in Syria are as human as those killed in Libya," Erdogan said.
Earlier, Russia called for all sides in Syria’s growing civil war to lay down their arms as they compared the situation a "civil war".
Residents claimed 20 people died in a rebel attack on an air force intelligence base on the outskirts of Damascus.
“This is already completely similar to real civil war,” Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said. He urged “all states” to demand that not only the government but also the opposition to halt the violence and begin talks.
Russia, along with China, has vetoed further international sanctions against their long-term strategic ally at the United Nations. But both are growing increasingly alarmed that in the absence of any foreign intervention the situation is spiralling out of control anyway.
In a seemingly co-ordinated move, the Chinese foreign ministry issed a statement calling on “all relevant parties” to implement the peace deal worked out between the Syrian government and the Arab League three weeks ago.
However, the Arab League last weekend declared that Syria had failed to withdraw its troops as promised and voted to suspend the country’s membership, a dramatic act only implemented in recent decades against Libya earlier this year.
At a summit on Wednesday night in the Moroccan capital Rabat, the League gave Syria three days to put the peace deal in place or have the suspension, and possibly further sanctions, put in place.
The attack on the intelligence complex, along with three raids on security checkoints around the capital, was claimed by the Turkish-based Free Syrian Army.
It threatened it could strike “anywhere and anytime” after it co-ordinated actions exposed the vulnerability of the regime’s security apparatus.
The FSA, an increasingly potent rebel outfit led by defecting military officers, has as yet little nationwide co-ordination. But it is clearly able to call upon a growing band of defecting troops from the regular military.
The rebels reportedly attacked the intelligence compound with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. Residents living nearby said they heard numerous explosions and the sound of army helicopters in the air above the complex.
“The defectors used rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns and managed to inflict casualties on those who were within the outer wall,” one logistics operative told Reuters.
The directorate is seen as a vital part of the Syrian security apparatus and has been at the heart of its bloody repression of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which the UN says has claimed more than 3,500 lives since it erupted in March.
It is accused both of overseeing the shooting of unarmed protesters in and around Damascus and of imprisoning and torturing thousands more.
There is an added symbolism too: Hafez al-Assad, the president’s father and predecessor, commanded the air force before he came to power in a coup in 1968, a fact that makes the directorate even more loathed in the eyes of regime opponents.
“The Free Syrian Army carried out special operations in all Damascus areas to foil a plan being prepared by the regime against our people and to send a message to the regime that the Free Syrian Army can hit anywhere and anytime,” the group said in a statement.
Coming a day after an insurgent attack on army base in southern Syria allegedly killed 34 soldiers, Wednesday’s strikes suggested that the Free Syrian Army, founded in July and based in Turkey, is increasingly capable of mounting a full-scale armed insurrection.
“We are seeing more of these kind of operations by the armed elements of the opposition,” Simon Collis, Britain’s ambassador to Damascus, was quoted as saying. “This is a new and emerging factor of what’s happening.
“If the reports turns out to be accurate it is the most high-profile incident of its kind. But it is not the first one. It is part of an emerging pattern.”
David Cameron meanwhile has been urged by at least one Arab state to lead a diplomatic offensive against Syria, after successfully cooperating with regional powers to oust Col Gaddafi, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
Britain has been contacted directly and encouraged to act as a “team captain” to coordinate discussion of more robust action against President Bashar al-Assad, and to plan for what is regarded as his inevitable departure.
“The West needs to lead and the international community needs to talk about what to do when the dam bursts in Syria,” said a senior Arab diplomatic source, adding that Syria’s neighbours held too many different views to coordinate effectively.
“Leaving it all up to us you are going to get a lot of shenanigans. If you need a team captain on this you have got to go to the West,” the source added.
France is already taking action. The foreign minister, Alain Juppe, today said officials had been talking to opposition figures with a view to help them become “organised".
He said he remained opposed to military intervention. But that position, which is shared by Britain and other western powers as well as Russia and China, is coming under increasing pressure from opposition groups seeking a buffer zone inside Syria for refugees and a no-fly zone.
Turkey’s prime minister, who has gone from friend to bitter foe of President Assad in a few months, demanded to know why Syria was not getting the attention that Libya had earlier in the year.
“The silence and unresponsiveness of those who have an appetite for Libya to the massacres in Syria is creating irreparable wounds in the conscience of humanity,” he said.
