Russia has
rejected Western calls for wider sanctions on Syria over its violent crackdown
on protests against President Bashar al-Assad, in which the United Nations said
2,600 people have been killed.
A day after France described the lack of a firm U.N.
stance against Damascus as a scandal, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday
recent U.S. and European sanctions on Syria meant "additional pressure now
is absolutely not needed in this direction."
Russia, which has a naval base
in Syria and major oil and gas concessions, and China -- both veto-wielding members of the
U.N. Security Council -- have resisted efforts by Washington and its European
allies to toughen the international response to Syria's repression of nearly
six months of protests.
Assad has reacted to the
uprising, inspired by revolts which have toppled three North African leaders
this year, with military assaults on protest centers and mass arrests.
On Monday, residents and local
activists said Syrian forces killed at least 22 civilians, including a father
and a son in the town of Rastan near Homs and 15 villagers in raids in the
countryside around Hama in what they said was one of the biggest military
assaults since the uprising broke out.
At least 2,000 troops backed
by dozens of armored vehicles fired machineguns at random and stormed several
villages and towns in the al-Ghab Plain, agricultural land northwest of Hama,
they said.
Residents and activists had
reported earlier that several thousand soldiers and hundreds of armored
vehicles had massed in the last 24 hours in areas north of Hama which had seen
large protests calling for Assad's removal.
Egypt added to growing
criticism of the crackdown by fellow Arab nations. "The solution must be
through negotiations and dialogue," Foreign Minister Mohammed Kamel Amr
said in an interview with Egyptian state television.
Damascus blames armed groups
for the violence. Assad's media adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, speaking on a trip
to Moscow on Monday, gave a lower death toll than the United Nations and said
half of the fatalities were among security forces.
"According to our
information, 700 people were killed on the side of the army and police and 700
on the side of the insurgents," Shaaban told reporters through a
translator.
U.N. High Commissioner for
Human Rights Navi Pillay said the United Nations figure was based on
"reliable sources on the ground."
"The number of those
killed since the onset of the unrest in mid-March ... has now reached at least
2,600," Pillay told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
She did not identify the
sources. Syria has barred Pillay's investigation team
and most foreign journalists from entering the country. Syria had also
repeatedly blocked U.N. efforts to get human rights monitors into the country,
U.N. humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos said.
The United Nations on Monday
named a three-member panel of international experts to investigate human rights
violations including possible crimes against humanity since the protests began.
Sergio Pinheiro of Brazil will lead the commission of inquiry,
which the U.N. Human Rights Council agreed to set up last month to probe
arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and killings and report back by
the end of November.
FRANCE WANTS "CLEAR UN
RESOLUTION"
France, Britain, the United
States, Germany and Portugal have circulated a draft
U.N. Security Council resolution that called for sanctions against Assad,
influential relatives and close associates, but it met resistance from Russia
and China.
"I think it's a scandal
not to have a clear position of the U.N. in such a terrible crisis,"
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Sunday.
"We think that the regime
has lost its legitimacy. We think that it's too late to implement a level of
reform. We should adopt in New York a very clear resolution condemning the
violence."
Medvedev said on Monday Russia
believed any resolution must be "tough but balanced, and addressed to both
sides in Syria," and that it must not automatically lead to further
sanctions because "there is already a large number of sanctions against
Syria."
Syrian demonstrators have
demanded international protection to stop civilian killings, but there has been
no hint in the West of any appetite for military action along the lines of the
NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
Intervention would be a
daunting prospect in a country in the heart of the volatile Middle East. Syria
has three times Libya's population, supports Palestinian and Lebanese militant
groups and has a strong alliance with Iran.
It remains formally at war with Israel, retains influence in Lebanon and has a
sizeable Kurdish minority in its east.
Assad has announced some
reforms such as ending emergency law and launching a "national dialogue."
Opponents say these have made little difference.
Among hundreds of Syrians
arrested in recent days was leading psychoanalyst Rafah Nashed, 66, who has
been treating people traumatized by the mounting repression, her friends said.
Three lecturers at Aleppo
University were also arrested on Monday in the northern city, activists said,
as the authorities stepped up arrests against members of the professional class
critical of the crackdown.
Security police also arrested
overnight Ahmad al-Zu'bi, professor of medicine at Damascus University, who has
been helping set up makeshift clinics to treat demonstrators attacked by
security forces, with hospitals becoming off-limits for many of the wounded
because of raids on medical facilities to arrest injured protesters, rights
campaigners said.
(Additional reporting Robert
Evans and Stephanie Nebehayin Geneva, Gleb Bryanski in Moscow, N. Ece Toksabay
in Turkey and Ali Abdelatti in Cairo; editing by Philippa
Fletcher)
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Source : Reuters
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