DAMASCUS, Feb 20, (Agencies): Syrian troops massed around Homs, sparking calls Monday for women and children to flee the besieged flashpoint city, as Iranian warships docked at the port of Tartus in a show of force.
The reported buildup came as Mediterranean states meeting in Rome agreed to preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and avoid an “Iraqi scenario,” according to Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem.
US General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said any intervention in Syria would be “very difficult” and that it was “premature” to arm the opposition.
China’s influential People’s Daily warned that any Western support for the rebels would trigger a “large-scale civil war.”
But, despite a weekend appeal by a visiting Chinese envoy for all sides to stop the violence, monitors said forces of embattled President Bashar al-Assad targeted the central city of Homs for a 17th straight day.
Attacks on Homs killed nine out of the 15 people killed across Syria so far on Monday, according to reports by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and official state media.
Shelling of Baba Amr, the main rebel stronghold in Homs, killed five civilians, while another four died when rockets crashed into Al-Malaab district, said the Britain-based Observatory.
The official SANA news agency said a lieutenant colonel and a sergeant were killed in a clash between border guards and an “armed terrorist group” in Athraya, central Hama province.
Activists and state media reported at least 14 people were killed Sunday, adding to the more than 6,000 people who have died in the Assad regime’s 11-month crackdown on dissent.
“Infantry troops arrived yesterday (Sunday) in Homs,” Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP on the telephone Monday.
A Homs-based activist voiced fears of an imminent attack on Baba Amr, the main rebel stronghold in the central city, speaking of “unprecedented military reinforcements coming from Damascus.”
“News has been leaked to us from army officers about a bloody attack that will burn everything in Baba Amr,” Hadi Abdullah of the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution said Sunday.
“We were expecting the attack two nights ago, but it could have been just delayed because of the snowstorm,” he said.
A day after saying Baba Amr was being hit at the rate of up to five rockets a minute, Abdullah on Monday demanded a safe passage to allow women and children to leave the district.
“We want women and children to be allowed to leave,” he told AFP, adding that “people were suffering from the weather while their conditions are miserable.”
Abdel Rahman was cautious about the timing of the expected attack.
“We do not know when the attack might happen,” he said.
Elsewhere, two warships from Iran, a key backer of the Syrian regime, docked at the port of Tartus, Tehran’s state television reported on Monday, adding that their crew would train Syrian sailors.
Iran’s navy chief, Admiral Habibollah Sayari, said on Saturday that the ships, a destroyer and supply vessel, had passed through the Suez Canal to show the Islamic republic’s military “might.”
In Damascus, regime forces remained on alert after two days of large and unexpected protests, and after a call for a “day of defiance” was observed in restive neighbourhoods, according to activists.
“Following the surprising demonstrations (on Friday and Saturday), the regime is reconsidering its security measures,” in the capital, said Abdel Rahman.
Mohammed Shami, a spokesman for activists in Damascus province, said security was bolstered in some areas in the tense neighbourhood of Mazzeh, including around the Iranian embassy.
Two masked men flew a large green, white and black flag of “independence” from a bridge in Kfar Sousa neighbourhood, according to amateur video footage uploaded by activists to YouTube.
Activists reported Sunday a security clampdown on Mazzeh, thwarting plans to stage large protests in the area, scene the day before of a funeral that became a huge anti-regime rally.
Meanwhile, the Syrian authorities freed blogger Razan Ghazzawi, symbol of an 11-month uprising, and six other female activists arrested last week, human rights lawyer Anwar Buni said.
The women were released on Saturday, but were ordered to report to police daily in order to continue their questioning, he said.
They were part of a group of 14 activists people arrested Thursday in a raid on the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, a group headed by rights activist Mazen Darwish.
Meanwhile, Bashar al-Assad said on Monday that foreign parties were funding “armed terrorist groups” to destabilise Syria and intent on blocking any political solution, the state news agency SANA reported.
It said the embattled president made the accusation in a meeting with a visiting top Russian MP, Alexei Pushkov, head of the international affairs committee of Russia’s lower house of parliament.
Assad thanked Russia for its support of his country which he said was being “targeted by armed terrorist groups receiving funding and arms from foreign parties, aiming to destabilise Syria,” SANA reported.
The same parties were determined “to block all efforts to reach a solution, especially with the reforms being brought in,” he added.
Russia is a close ally of Damascus, which is under mounting Arab and international pressure to end its crackdown on pro-democracy protests that activists say has killed more than 6,000 people since March 2011.
The Russian MP, for his part, accused “some influential big states” of meddling into Syria’s affairs, using humanitarian aid as a cover, SANA reported.
“Humanitarian intervention ends up non-humanitarian,” he said, according to an Arabic translation provided by SANA, adding that the lower house “rejects such military interventions”.
He accused major powers of “using international organisations to satisfy their interests,” SANA added.
Moscow and Beijing earlier this month vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning the violence by Assad’s regime, an action which earned Moscow a tirade of criticism from the West.
The visit by Pushkov, a member of the ruling United Russia party and former television commentator, comes after Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Damascus earlier this month with Assad.
In Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is negotiating with Syrian authorities and opposition fighters on a ceasefire to bring life-saving aid to civilians hardest hit by the conflict, it said on Monday.
“The ICRC is exploring several possibilities for delivering urgently needed humanitarian aid. These include a cessation of fighting in the most affected areas to facilitate swift Syrian Arab Red Crescent and ICRC access to the people in need,” ICRC spokeswoman Carla Haddad said.
Diplomatic sources told Reuters the Geneva-based ICRC, the only international agency deploying aid workers in Syria, is seeking a two-hour cessation of hostilities in hotspots including Homs, where opposition strongholds have been under fire for weeks.
The discussions with Syrian authorities and “all those involved in the fighting” remained confidential, Haddad said, declining to provide any details.
Since the start of the revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad nearly a year ago, the independent humanitarian agency has been delivering food and medical supplies to civilians in cities from Deraa to Homs.
But with the intensified crackdown in the last several weeks, ambulances of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have had more difficulty reaching rebel-held areas and evacuating the growing number of wounded, the ICRC says.
Some areas are facing severe food shortages, it said last week.
Yemen
A blast tore through a polling station and gunfire nearby killed a soldier in south Yemen on Monday, the eve of a presidential election to replace Ali Abdullah Saleh and launch reforms after a year of mass protests and spreading anarchy.
The violence in the port of Aden underlined the challenges Saleh’s successor will face in seeking to prevent Yemen from becoming a failed state and draft a new constitution that would underpin multi-party elections in two years’ time.
After the explosion, which caused no casualties, unidentified gunmen opened fire on an army patrol in the vicinity, killing a soldier and wounding another, a security official said. It was unclear if the two incidents were related.
A vehicle carrying ballot boxes had been attacked a day earlier. Interior Minister Abdul Qader Qahtan said security measures were in place but that some violence in the southern province of Abyan, an al Qaeda stronghold, was unavoidable.
“There are preventive security measures to confront any contingency ... to confront any group that may attack people,” Qahtan said. “Abyan still has many districts under the control of al Qaeda, there are security failures ... and an explosion here and there is expected.”
The fact that Vice President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi will be the only candidate in the election, under a power transfer deal brokered by Yemen’s Gulf neighbours, has raised concern about a low turnout that would curb his legitimacy.
The vote would make Saleh, now in the United States for further treatment of burns suffered in a June assassination attempt, the fourth Arab autocrat to leave office in a year after revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
But prospects for a transition towards stable representative government remain uncertain at best given Saleh’s vow to return home to lead his party anew, a split in the military, al Qaeda militants entrenched in the south, a Houthi Shi’ite Muslim revolt in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
“These elections are an important milestone for Yemen’s transition,” said UN Yemen envoy Jamal Benomar.
“The new government should more actively engage with youth, the Houthis and the Southern Movement. The political process will remain in jeopardy if these constituencies remain outside the political process.”
In a speech late on Monday, Hadi said Yemen had returned from the brink of collapse and called on the splintered military to help unify the Arabian Peninsula state, where chaos would threaten nearby oil shipping lanes crucial to the world economy.
“In the past months Yemen has passed through unprecedented hardship, to the point where the most optimistic of observers expected it to become as fragmented, splintered and destroyed as Somalia,” Hadi said.
“We cannot talk about a stable nation without returning life to its natural state and removing the phenomena which have appeared, beginning with the split in the army.”
Tuesday’s vote is part of a deal hammered out by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, anxious to avert a slide into lawlessness on their doorstep.
Backed by the United States, the United Nations and European Union, the deal envisages a new constitution and a referendum paving the way for a multi-party election in two years.
But Hadi’s proximity to Saleh and his involvement in a process conceived by diplomats has alienated the Yemeni street, where thousands have camped in shabby tent cities demanding Saleh’s removal.
The deal’s offer of immunity to Saleh from prosecution over the killing of protesters has only deepened those suspicions.
“The elections are a political scenario mapped out in the GCC initiative but in its essence it is irrelevant to the true ideals of democracy,” said Rana Jarhoum, 29, development worker. “Hadi is going to be elected anyway.”
Many also suspect that Hadi will be no more than a caretaker, put in place by Saleh, who has vowed to return after the vote and lead his General People’s Congress (GPC) party.
Members of Saleh’s inner circle retain key positions of influence, not least his son Ahmed Ali, who commands the Republican Guards, and Yehia, his nephew, who heads the Central Security Forces. They are locked in a stand-off with tribal leader Sadeq al-Ahmar and dissident General Ali Mohsen.
“The continuation of a divided military cannot be sustained. We have to have a reintegrated and reunified military leadership,” said US Ambassador Gerald Feierstein. “There is still a high level of distrust and a lack of confidence between the two sides.”
Meanwhile, Iran is becoming more active in Yemen and could pose a deeper threat to its stability and security, the US envoy to Yemen said on Monday, highlighting what would be yet another layer of uncertainty in a near-failed state.
US Ambassador Gerald Feierstein’s warning is likely to reinforce long-held fears among Sunni Gulf monarchies that Shiite Muslim power Iran is trying exploit regional unrest.
“We do see Iran trying to increase its presence here, in ways that we believe are unhelpful to Yemen’s stability and security,” Feierstein said in an interview one day before Yemenis head to the polls to elect a new president to replace Ali Abdullah Saleh, ending his three decades in power.
The election, is part of a power transfer plan backed by the United States and brokered by Gulf Arab countries after a year of protests against Saleh’s rule.
“I think that we are seeing increasing Iranian outreach to various actors,” Feierstein said.
Bahrain
A court in Manama on Monday acquitted a former MP who is a member of Bahrain’s largest opposition formation Al-Wefaq Shiite grouping who was accused of “unlawful assembly in public areas,” he told AFP.
“The last charge against me has been dropped,” said Matar Matar, who had been charged with “undermining public security by assembling with a group of more than five people.”
In August Bahrain ordered the release of Matar and another Al-Wefaq member, Jawad Fayruz, who were both arrested last May after a crackdown on Shiite-led protests.
The court had already dropped two of the three charges Matar was being tried for — calling for regime change and spreading rumours linked to pro-democracy protests in the Gulf kingdom.
Matar and Fayruz were among 18 Shiite MPs who resigned last year in protest at the government’s crackdown on Shiite-led demonstrations that erupted on Feb 14, 2011. Fayruz’s trial is still continuing.
Last year’s crackdown left 35 people dead, according to an independent commission of inquiry into the violence.
Saudi
A Saudi interior ministry official says “foreign parties” are instigating unrest in Shiite-majority eastern regions, calling the protesters “the new terrorists.”
The comments by the unnamed official were carried by the official Saudi Press Agency Monday. Protesters from the country’s Shiite minority have held limited rallies for the past year in the east complaining of discrimination by the kingdom’s Sunni rulers.
At least four protesters have been killed in clashes with security forces since November. Officials have blamed foreign meddling in an apparent reference to Shiite Iran.
The official said Saudi actions were not comparable to other regime crackdowns against protests in Arab world, saying that the authorities were acting in self-defense.
Meanwhile, A court in Saudi Arabia has acquitted Saeed bin Zuair, a political activist who had been in jail for five years on terrorism charges, his son Abdullah bin Zuair said on Monday.
Bin Zuair, 62, a media professor who has called for political reform, has been jailed three times since 1995, most recently in 2007 on accusations related to security and terrorism.
The late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden once called for his release in an audio recording, but human rights groups say Zuair is a peaceful activist.
“We are very happy for his acquittal... the procedures are not done yet for his release. Now we are waiting for the court to request his release from the interior ministry. We don’t know when that will happen,” his son told Reuters.
Zuair has in the past spoken out against Saudi reliance on the United States to ensure its defence, criticised moves to allow peace with Israel, called for more democracy and has attacked corruption in the royal family.
On Sunday the Saudi Press Agency said a judge in Riyadh had acquitted “a Saudi Arabian accused of helping al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.” Without naming Zuair it said the man had been in possession of banned books, which were confiscated along with a computer, cassette tapes and videos.
“He is a very strong man...It is sad to keep him in jail for several years, then try him and find him not guilty,” said human rights lawyer Bassim Alim, who knows Zuair but did not represent him.
Zuair did not appoint a lawyer to defend him because he did not agree with the charges against him, Alim said.
In November, 17 other activists were sentenced to prison terms of up to 30 years on charges including sedition and terrorism after a trial criticised by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
Saudi Arabia, ruled by the al-Saud royal family in alliance with Islamic clerics, has attempted slow and cautious reforms but conservatives, who are wary of Western influence, are critical of change.
Egypt
The chief prosecutor in the trial of ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak has said in his closing remarks that the former president should be given the death penalty for the killings of protesters in last year’s uprising.
Mustafa Suleiman says Mubarak clearly authorized use of live ammunition and a shoot-to-kill policy against peaceful protesters. Over 800 were killed in the crackdown from Jan 25 to Feb 11, 2011.
For this, Suleiman said on Monday, Mubarak and five co-defendants, including his longtime Interior Minister Habib al-Adly, should receive the maximum sentence.
The defense team of the former president, who ruled Egypt for nearly 30 years, is expected to present its closing arguments later this week.
Egypt’s “Facebook Revolution” that toppled Hosni Mubarak last February may have been boosted by Internet social networking, but his downfall was inevitable anyway, a communications expert said on Sunday.
“It was a people’s revolution, accelerated, facilitated by the Internet,” said Rasha Abdulla, associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University in Cairo (AUC).
Without social networks such as Twitter and YouTube, “it would have happened but much later,” she said, adding: “Practically it helped people to organise.”
Abdulla was speaking at a conference entitled “Tweeting the revolution: how social media helped bring down a dictator.”
“This revolution didn’t start in 2011, but it accelerated with the introduction of blogs” around 2003 in Egypt, before social media really began making their mark, she said.
She singled out the posting online after 2005 of videos showing sexual harassment or police violence, and the formation of the “Kefaya” (“Enough” in Arabic) movement aimed at the Mubarak regime the same year.
Online appeals also played a great part in mobilising strikes in early April 2008, leading to the creation of the “April 6 Group,” a driving force behind last year’s revolution.
“The new thing in 2011 is instead of having demos of 20 to 200 people, all of a sudden they had masses of people,” Abdulla said.
Gradually social networks created “horizontal communication” between Internet users talking to each other one-on-one, she said, and “gave them that sense of ‘I have a voice, I’m entitled to speak and I will speak, this is my country.’”
She also said the Facebook page “We are all Khaled Said” — dedicated to a young man beaten to death by police in Alexandria — played a huge role in sparking the revolution.
“The page that had the biggest effect. This page was instrumental, the first page in Egypt to have such a big number” of members, Abdulla said.
“It was a political page by nature. All the conversations on the page were political. When the call for the 25th of January came, almost half a million clicked on the ‘I’m attending’ button. That encouraged the people.”
“There was momentum in the air,” she said of Tunisia’s uprising against president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Conditions were ripe for a mass mobilisation in Egypt.
Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court said Sunday the nominating period for presidential candidates will open March 10 and last four weeks, but stopped short of announcing a date for the election.
Farouq Sultan, the head of the court committee overseeing the vote, told reporters that a decision is expected soon on when Egypt will hold presidential elections, adding that balloting will take place over one or two days. But he said the announcement of the winner — even from a potential run-off — would be declared by the end of June, which would suggest the vote could be held no later than early June.
Libya
Residents of the battle-scarred town of Misrata voted on Monday to elect a local council, in Libya’s first polls in more than 40 years, four months after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi.
“This is an historic event. We hope these elections will be an example” for the rest of Libya, the president of the port city’s electoral commission, Mohammed Balrouin, told AFP.
He said it was “a dress rehearsal for the upcoming vote” to be held nationwide in June to elect a constituent assembly.
Misrata residents were electing 28 council members from a field of 242 candidates. Some 101,486 people were registered to cast their ballots, from 156,000 eligible voters, in a city with a population of 281,000, said Balrouin.
By midday, the election official put the turnout at between 30 and 60 percent. “Our goal was to have a turnout of more than 30 percent. I believe we’re almost there,” he said.
Monday was declared a public holiday in Misrata, both for the election and to commemorate the date, exactly a year ago, when the city rose up against the regime of Gaddafi who banned elections as an “invention of the West.”
The “city of martyrs” in Libya’s revolution was besieged for several months by Gaddafi’s forces and suffered some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict.
“Today we are tasting freedom and democracy. Thank God, the blood of the martyrs was not spilt in vain,” said Fama al-Shawesh, a 19-year-old student, waving blue ink on a finger to show she had voted.
At a polling station in the city centre, voters entered a private cubicle to select their candidate. After casting their ballot, they were made to dip a finger in indelible blue ink, in a bid to prevent people from voting twice.
The count was to begin after the end of voting at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT), with results to be announced on Tuesday.