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March 11th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
They were pursued by regime forces, with a major tank assault being reported
on the nearby town of Jisr al-Shughour and surrounding villages. Both sides
in the conflict suffered significant casualties, with 44 rebels and 24
soldiers being killed in clashes both in Idlib and the city of Homs, scene
of the uprising’s bloodiest pro-regime offensive last month.
Mr Annan’s mission was never going to achieve instantaneous results, but the
scale of the violence that accompanied his first visit to Damascus — the
most high-profile by any foreign official — will discourage even his most
ardent supporters.
Buoyed by a string of battlefield victories, in particular the subjugation of
the Baba Amr district of Homs, Mr Assad showed little inclination either to
rein in his forces or to begin negotiations with the opposition.
While saying he would support “any honest effort” at international mediation,
the Syrian president insisted that a political solution was impossible as
long as “terrorist groups” — his term for the rebels — threatened the
country.
Mr Annan, one of the world’s most experienced conflict negotiators, said he
would not be deterred despite his failure to make any headway.
“It’s going to be tough,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult; but we have to
have hope. The situation is so bad and so dangerous that all of us cannot
afford to fail.”
Complicating his efforts, the former secretary general appears to enjoy little
confidence from either side in the conflict with the main opposition group
signalling its outrage at his calls for all parties to end violence and
begin negotiations.
“Negotiations can never take place between the victim and torturer,” the
Syrian National Council said in a statement. “Assad and his entourage must
step down as a condition before starting any serious negotiations.”
But in a significant policy shift, Arab League ministers distanced themselves
from previous calls for regime change following a meeting in Cairo with
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. In an effort to win Moscow’s
backing for a draft United Nations Security Council resolution, the League
backed a Russian proposal that rejected foreign intervention and called on
all sides to end the violence.
But in a sign of how far Russia’s stock in the Middle East has fallen because
of its support for the Assad regime, Mr Lavrov faced a withering lecture
from his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud al-Faisal.
“We must stop issuing hollow resolutions and taking spineless positions,”
Prince Saud said. “The position of those countries which thwarted UN
Security Council resolutions and voted against the resolution of the General
Assembly gave the Syrian regime a licence to extend its brutal practices
against the Syrian people.”
Russia, along with China, has twice vetoed Security Council resolutions
condemning the Assad regime. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, has
convened a meeting of the Council on Monday when efforts to win Russian
backing for a watered-down resolution calling for both sides to end violence
and grant access for humanitarian aid.
Russia has demanded revisions to the draft, but there are signs that its
support for Mr Assad, one of Moscow’s most important arms clients, is
wavering. Russia’s respected Kommersant newspaper quoted a senior Kremlin
source as saying that the Syrian leader has only “a ten per cent chance” of
surviving in power.
The Syrian army has been unable to inflict a decisive blow against the rebels.
Its recent victories mask the fact that it is only capturing towns that it
retook in offensives last year, when parts of Homs, Idlib and Jisr
al-Shughour were supposedly pacified, only to once again fall under rebel
control.
At the same time, the pace of defections, though still slow, is increasing,
with a deputy minister and two generals all deserting Mr Assad in the last
week alone.
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