KUWAIT CITY, Feb 8, (Agencies): Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Khaled Sulaiman Al-Jarallah re-ceived on Wednesday Ambassador of Syria to Kuwait Bassam Ali Abdelmajeed.

A Foreign Ministry statement said that Al-Jarallah asked the Ambassador to leave the country in accordance with what had been agreed upon by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states yesterday.
Meanwhile, in Cairo, permanent representative of Kuwait to the Arab League Ambassador Jamal Mohamed Al-Ghoneim said on Wednesday that the State of Kuwait will participate in three ministerial meetings devoted to discuss the situation in Syria.

Al-Ghoneim said in a statement to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) that the Arab League will convene next Sunday four ministerial meetings where Kuwait will participate in three of them aimed to look at alternatives available to deal with the situation in Syria, especially after the Russian and Chinese double veto.

He added that the first meeting of foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries will be chaired by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal to discuss developments of the situation in Syria particularly following the double vetor of China and Russia in the United Nationsl Security Council.
Al-Ghoneim said the second meeting will be for the Arab Ministerial Committee on the Syrian crisis to be chaired by Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem, adding that the recommendations reached by the Committee will be submitted to the resumed session of the Council of the Arab League at the level of Foreign Ministers to be held in a separate meeting after the meeting of the Committee.

He added that the third meeting will be of the Arab League Council at the level of Foreign Ministers with the participation of all Arab countries except Syria.

He concluded by saying that the fourth meeting will be the a ministerial gathering for the Arab peace initiative committee to be chaired by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem with the participation of Kuwait.
Killing

Meanwhile, Syrian forces thrust into the rebellious city of Homs on Wednesday, killing as many as 100 civilians by the accounts of opposition activists, and Turkey appeared to be preparing a new diplomatic push against President Bashar al-Assad.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who is readying an initiative uniting Western, Arab and other states which have called for Ankara’s former ally Assad to step down, was due to speak to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev later on Wednesday.

The Turkish premier, who described the Russian and Chinese veto of the UN resolution at the weekend as a “fiasco”, faces a hard sell with Moscow. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has condemned Western “interference” of the kind seen last year in Libya as a “cult of violence”.

Putin, who first won the presidency after his military assault on the rebel Russian city of Grozny, is expected to return to the Kremlin via an election next month in which the Russian leader accuses the West of aiding his opponents.

Moscow’s foreign minister, having visited Assad in Damascus on Tuesday, made clear Russia was still opposed to any peace talks that were conditional on Assad first stepping aside.

A newspaper close to the Erdogan government said Turkey planned to organise a conference with Arab and Western governments in Istanbul, part of a broader initiative that may be outlined later on Wednesday. A NATO member and rising Muslim power in the region, Ankara is sheltering Syrian rebel army commanders and has spoken of creating safe havens for refugees.

As the diplomatic gears turned, the military offensive in Homs and elsewhere showed no sign of let up. Activists in the city also accused militiamen of slaughtering three families in their homes — the sort of incident that is fueling fears of a descent into more widespread, Iraq-style sectarian killing.
The day’s death toll stood at over 100, activists said, offering figures that could not be independently verified.

The onslaught on Homs, one of the bloodiest of the 11-month-old revolt against Assad, has not relented despite a promise to end the bloodshed that the Syrian leader gave to Russia, which saved Damascus from UN Security Council action on Saturday.

In the latest assault on Homs, troops fired rockets and mortars while tanks entered the Inshaat neighbourhood and moved closer to Bab Amro, the district hardest hit by bombardments that have killed nearly 200 people in the last two days, activists in the city and opposition sources said.

A group known as the Syrian Revolution General Commission called in a statement in the afternoon for outside humanitarian protection and that the day’s death toll stood at 100.

Hospitals were without electricity, it said, and were short of supplies, while the wounded and those transporting them to clinics perpetually risked arrest by the security forces.

Syrian state television blamed explosions on Homs militants laying charges. It accused “terrorists” of targeting a key refinery in the city with mortars while activists blamed the army for a fire that was filmed by residents.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said countries with influence over the Syrian opposition should press them to enter a dialogue with Assad, comments that made clear Moscow had no immediate intention of abandoning its long-time ally.

Lavrov was speaking in Moscow a day after he met Assad in Damascus, where he said both nations wanted to revive an Arab League monitoring effort that was suspended due to violence.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe dismissed Syrian pledges of peace as deceit, “and we’re not going to fall for it”.

Putin insisted Russia was acting in good faith and was wary of Western motives in Syria: “We of course condemn all violence regardless of its source, but one cannot act like an elephant in a china shop,” Putin told Russian religious leaders.

“Help them, advise them, limit, for instance, their ability to use weapons but not interfere under any circumstances.

“A cult of violence has been coming to the fore in international affairs in the past decade,” he said.
Syrian opposition figures, who said Lavrov had brought no new initiative, spurn Assad’s promises of reform as meaningless while his troops are killing civilians and say he must go.

Walid al-Bunni, a senior member of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), dismissed Lavrov’s dialogue proposal.

“The Arab initiative is clear. Assad must step down and Syrians will then be ready to sit together at a table with whoever succeeds him to discuss a democratic transition,” the head of the SNC’s foreign policy committee told Reuters.

Western and Arab states frustrated by the Russian and Chinese vetoes of their draft UN resolution are seeking to isolate Assad and bolster those opposed to his 11-year rule.

Pro-Assad militiamen shot dead at least 20 civilians in Homs when they stormed their homes on the outskirts of opposition areas overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Rami Abdelrahman, who heads the British-based Observatory, told Reuters the unarmed victims were a family of five, one of seven and one of eight.

There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities and the report could not be verified. The authorities have placed tight restrictions on access to the country.
Activist Hassan said bombardment intensified in the early morning, targeting the Sunni Muslim districts of Bab Amro, al-Bayada, al-Khalidiya and Wadi al-Arab, all hostile to Assad, whose minority Alawite sect has dominated Syria for five decades.
“Mortar and rocket fire has subsided, but heavy machineguns and anti-aircraft guns are still strong,” he said. “Tanks are in main thoroughfares in the city and appear poised to push deep into residential areas.”
State news agency SANA said funerals had been conducted on Tuesday for 30 members of the security forces.

Army deserters and insurgents, at least nominally commanded by officers based in Turkey, are fighting back against Assad’s violent response to what began as a mostly peaceful protest movement and now threatens to slide into sectarian civil war.
“Assad is seeing the civilised world turn against him and he thinks he will win if he uses more brutal force before the world could act,” said Catherine al-Talli, a senior SNC member.
The attack on Homs has intensified Western and regional diplomatic pressure on Assad. The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council recalled their ambassadors from Damascus on Tuesday and expelled Syrian envoys from their own capitals.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd called in Syria’s charge d’affaires Jawdat Ali on Wednesday and told him it was time for Assad to “find an exit strategy before the situation in Syria degenerates further and more lives are lost”.

Russia’s veto of the Security Council resolution on Syria went beyond protecting an ally and arms buyer, analysts said. It showed Moscow’s determination to crush what it sees as a Western crusade to use the United Nations to topple unfriendly governments.
Arming
Meanwhile, In Washington, the White House said on Tuesday that the US is not considering arming opposition groups in Syria, deflecting calls from some lawmakers to explore such a possibility as one way to quell the violence in Syria.
However, US officials said no option would be completely ruled out as the Obama administration grapples for a way to end the bloodshed and facilitate a political transition.
“We are not considering that step right now,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said of the prospect of arming the rebels.
Carney said current deliberations inside the administration are focused on how the US could provide humanitarian aid to the Syrian people, though he wouldn’t say what form such assistance might take.
At the State Department, spokesman Victoria Nuland said that while the US never takes any option off the table, “we don’t think more arms into Syria is the answer.”
Earlier Tuesday, some congressional lawmakers, including Republican Sen John McCain, called for the US to explore the prospect of arming opposition forces in Syria.
“We should start considering options, arming the opposition,” McCain said. “The bloodletting has got to stop.”
McCain was a staunch advocate last year for the US to arm rebels in Libya in their fight against Muammar Gaddafi and forces loyal to his regime. The US and NATO did ultimately provide military help under the cover of a UN mandate.
The US and other Western powers have met repeatedly with members of Syria’s emerging political opposition, but they are leery of engaging closely with would-be rebel forces without the legal protection of a similar UN resolution.
But in the wake of last weekend’s defeat of a Security Council resolution calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down, western nations have little appetite for another run at the UN And there is even less interest in trying to find ways around the UN to help anti-Assad forces militarily.
While the double-veto by Russia and China at the Security Council Saturday put diplomatic efforts at an impasse, the US says it is still loath to consider a military option.
President Barack Obama pushed back this week on questions about why the US engaged militarily in Libya, but not in Syria.
“Not every situation is going to allow for the kind of military solution we saw with Libya,” Obama said in an interview that aired Monday on NBC. “I think it is very possible for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for “friends of democratic Syria” to unite and rally against Assad’s regime, previewing the possible formation of a group of like-minded nations to coordinate assistance to the Syrian opposition. Speaking in Bulgaria on Sunday, she said the world had a duty to halt the violence and see Assad out of power.
Warned
In Moscow, meanwhile, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday against foreigners behaving “like a bull in a china shop” towards Syria after his envoy returned from talks with President Bashar al-Assad.
“Of course, we condemn violence from whichever side it comes, but we must not behave like a bull in a china shop,” Russian news agencies quoted Putin as saying.
“We need to allow people to decide their own fate independently.”
He spoke after his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov declined to say earlier Wednesday whether Moscow had asked the embattled leader to go in his meeting with Assad.
“Any outcome of national dialogue should be the result of agreement between the Syrians themselves and should be acceptable to all Syrians,” Lavrov told reporters.
He sidestepped a direct question from a reporter who asked him whether he urged Assad to step down during talks in Damascus Tuesday, conducted as Syrian forces shelled opposition centres in the city of Homs.
“Trying in advance to decide the result of national dialogue is basically not the job of the international community,” Lavrov said, adding that both the government and all the opposition forces should sit down for talks.
All those who have influence over the Syrian opposition forces should urge them to start negotiations with Assad’s government, he added.
Some analysts said Lavrov’s most recent remarks indicated Moscow had not shifted its stance on Syria.
“Judging by Lavrov’s statements after his Damascus visit the question of Assad’s resignation has not been raised,” said Boris Dolgov, an analyst at the Moscow-based Institute of Oriental Studies.
“It would have been strange anyway — why would Russia start talking about his resignation after having vetoed the Syria resolution” in the United Nations.
Lavrov quoted Assad as saying he told Vice President Faruq al-Shara “to contact all opposition groups and to organise a national dialogue that will be inclusive and encompass all Syrian political forces.”
Lavrov, who was given a hero’s welcome in Damascus by pro-Assad demonstrators, also said that recalling envoys from Syria would not help the Arab League’s plan.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wants the search for a solution to the Syrian crisis to continue, including within the United Nations Security Council, the Kremlin said Wednesday.
Medvedev urged “the necessity of continuing — including at the UN Security Council — a search for coordinated approaches to help the Syrians regulate the crisis themselves” in a phone call with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
He added this must happen “without outside interference, with complete respect for the sovereignty of Syria.”
Russia last week used its veto at the Security Council to block UN action on Syria, a decision that Medvedev described as justified, arguing the proposed resolution did not promote the search for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
The proposed resolution “did not allow us to make unbiased assessments of the situation in Syria or to ensure that the call for a ceasefire and an end to bloodshed was addressed to both sides,” Medvedev was quoted as saying.
“Such a resolution would not have promoted the search for a peaceful way out of the crisis.”
Sanctions
In another report, the European Union will impose harsher sanctions on Syria, a senior EU official said Wednesday, as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the opposition to calm violence.
In Brussels, a senior EU official said the 27-nation bloc will soon impose harsher sanctions against Syria as it seeks to weaken Assad’s regime.
The official said the new measures may include bans on the import of Syrian phosphates, on commercial flights between Syria and Europe, and on financial transactions with the country’s central bank. The European Union imports 40 percent of Syria’s phosphate exports.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with EU rules, said some measures would be adopted at the EU foreign ministers meeting on Feb 27. But he stressed the nature of the measures to be adopted remained unclear since the ministers are concerned over the impact on the Syrian public.
The UN’s top human rights official Navi Pillay called on nations to immediately act to stop the bloodshed, saying she was “appalled” by the Syrian regime’s offensive against the central city of Homs, where activists say hundreds have been killed since Saturday.
She said the killings show an “extreme urgency for the international community to cut through the politics and take effective action to protect the Syrian population.”
A crowd of more than 2,000 people demonstrated on Wednesday in the Qatari capital against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his deadly crackdown on protests, an AFP correspondent reported.
Syrian and other Arab protesters took part in the rally outside Doha’s largest mosque, as Qatari security forces deployed in strength.
“We want help for the (rebel) Free Syrian Army, on which we pin hopes to free us from Assad’s gang,” read a banner carried by demonstrators, who thanked the Gulf monarchies, including Qatar, for deciding Tuesday to expel Syrian envoys.
Syrian activists demonstrated on Tuesday outside the Russian embassy in Doha in protest at Russia’s veto on a UN Security Council resolution condemning the repression in Syria.
Qatar has been leading Arab efforts in drumming up international support for pressure on Assad’s regime to end the bloodshed.
Meanwhile, “Omar the Syrian” was the pseudonym of Mazhar Tayyara, a stringer for Agence France-Presse and activist killed in overnight shelling of the city of Homs, where regime forces stand accused of having carried out a “massacre.”
The 24-year engineering student left his home in Inshaat district in the middle of the night and went to the protest stronghold of Khaldiyeh that was bearing the brunt of an onslaught last Friday, activists said.
“He was trying to help some people wounded in the bombardment when a second volley of shells fell and he was hit,” a friend told AFP.
“He was hit in the head, the stomach and in a leg and died of his injuries three hours later in hospital,” early Saturday, the friend, who lives outside Syria, said requesting anonymity.
Tayyara was stringing for several media including the AFP video service, the British daily The Guardian, and the German newspaper Die Welt. He also appeared on the satellite networks Al-Jazeera and CNN.