Syrians inspecting the site of an explosion in the district of Waroud, in the western Damascus suburb of Qudsaya, yesterday.
JEDDAH/AMMAN: Britain floated the notion yesterday of Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad leaving power with immunity from prosecution while the opposition said at least 100 more people were killed in the country’s 19-month revolt.
“Anything, anything, to get that man out of the country and to have a safe transition in Syria,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told Al Arabiya news network in Abu Dhabi before flying to Saudi Arabia.
Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi warned that Syria, where some 32,000 people have died in the revolt against Assad, could end up a collapsed state like Somalia, prey to warlords and militias.
More than 100 people were killed across the country yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Among them was the brother of Syria’s parliament speaker, assassinated by gunmen in Damascus, state television said. He was the latest victim in a deadly campaign against perceived Assad supporters and their families.
Air strikes killed 17 people, including women and children, in the Damascus suburb of Kfar Batna, according to the Syrian Observatory, an opposition watchdog based in Britain.
Video footage of the raid’s aftermath, which could not be verified, showed a toddler with a severed head and the torso of a young man, his head and limbs gathered near him by rescuers.
Insurgents killed 12 soldiers and wounded 20 in an attack on a convoy of off-road vehicles in the northern province of Idlib.
Air strikes and artillery barrages unleashed by the Syrian military in the last few weeks have devastated whole districts of the capital, as well as parts of towns and cities elsewhere.
Yet, for all their firepower, Assad’s forces seem no closer to crushing their lightly armed opponents, who in turn have so far proved unable to topple the Syrian leader.
“Of course I would favour him facing the full force of international law and justice for what he’s done,” Cameron said of Assad. “I am certainly not offering him an exit plan to Britain but if he wants to leave he could leave, that could be arranged.”
It was unclear if Cameron had spoken to other U.N. Security Council members about the idea - which could involve offering Assad immunity from prosecution if he accepted asylum in a third country. Nor was it clear what nation would take him.
The UN human rights office has said Syrian officials suspected of committing or ordering crimes against humanity should face prosecution at the International Criminal Court. UN investigators have been gathering evidence of atrocities committed by rebels as well as by Assad loyalists.
Brahimi, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, told the London-based Al Hayat newspaper he did not expect ethnic or sectarian partition there. “What I am afraid of is worse ... the collapse of the state and that Syria turns into a new Somalia.”
At the United Nations, diplomats cited a senior UN official as telling the Security Council that Brahimi had urged Russia to be “more pro-active” in resolving the Syrian crisis.
In a closed-door session of the 15-nation council, UN political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman also said he had received credible reports of the use of cluster bombs by Syrian government forces, the envoys reported.
Big powers and regional nations are split over Syria. Russia and China have blocked three Western-backed UN Security Council draft resolutions aimed at exerting pressure on Assad.
Brahimi, speaking in Cairo on Sunday, called on the council to adopt a resolution based on an understanding brokered by his predecessor Kofi Annan in Geneva in June which called for the establishment of a transitional government in Syria.
The Geneva Declaration did not specify what role, if any, Assad would play in a future Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged the Syrian opposition to enter talks with the authorities to end the crisis and abandon a precondition that Assad step down. “The most important thing is stopping the violence immediately. If it is more important to the other side to change the Assad regime, then they want to continue the bloodbath in Syria,” Lavrov said in Amman after meeting former Syrian Prime Minister Riad Hijab, who defected to Jordan in August. Hijab said Assad’s removal was “the only way out”.
Assad’s foes have also failed to unite, making it harder for the outside world to support or arm them. Reuters
