Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad said on Thursday Moscow was still committed to sending him
advanced anti-aircraft weapons, although a source close to the Russian defense
ministry said the missiles had yet to arrive.
The prospect of the
missiles arriving is a serious worry for Western and regional countries
opposing Assad which have called on Moscow not to send them.
The S-300 missiles
would make it far more dangerous for Western countries to impose any future
no-fly zone over Syrian air space, and could even be used to shoot down
aircraft deep over the air space of neighbors like Israel or Turkey.
The two-year-old
civil war, which has killed more than 80,000 people, has reached one of its
bloodiest phases with a counter-offensive by Assad’s forces, backed openly by
allies from neighboring Lebanon’s Hezbollah Shi’ite militia.
Syrian rebels under
siege in Qusair near the Lebanese border pleaded for help on Thursday, warning
that the strategic town they are struggling to hold faced total destruction.
With Iran and
Hezbollah rallying to Assad’s defense and his Western-backed Syrian opponents
mired in squabbles, the president sounded confident of his position.
Speaking to
Hezbollah’s al-Manar television, he said he would attend talks in Geneva
convened by Washington and Moscow, but expected to keep fighting.
By taking part in
peace talks, Syria would effectively be negotiating with its international foes
who back the opposition, he said: “When we negotiate with the slave we are
actually negotiating with the master.”
Russia, which has
supported Assad’s family since the Cold War, says it will send the S-300
missiles in part to help prevent the West from imposing a no-fly zone. A source
close to the Defense Ministry in Moscow said the “hardware itself”
had not yet arrived, although the contract was being implemented.
A Lebanese newspaper
earlier quoted Assad as saying in his al-Manar interview that Moscow had
already sent a first shipment of missiles, although when the actual interview
was broadcast Assad appeared to stop short of saying the missiles had arrived.
“Everything we
have agreed on with Russia will take place, and part of it has already taken
place,” he said, without giving further details.
SURROUNDED
Rebels in the
besieged border town of Qusair warned that it could be wiped off the map and
hundreds of their wounded might die if no help came soon.
“The town is
surrounded and there’s no way to bring in medical aid,” Malek Ammar, an
opposition activist in the town, told Breeze Magazine over an Internet link,
adding that about 100 of the 700 wounded needed bottled oxygen to keep
breathing.
“What we need
them to do,” he said of other rebel units, “is come to the outskirts
of the city and attack the checkpoints so we can get routes in and out of the
city”.
U.S., Russian and
U.N. officials will meet on June 5 to make arrangements for a peace conference,
known as “Geneva 2” after a first conference last year in the Swiss
city, which produced an international agreement to set up a “transitional
government” but no agreement on whether Assad would remain a part of it.
If the latest U.S.
initiative aims to win over Moscow to the position that Assad must leave power,
it seems to have failed.
Moscow spoke out on
Thursday against the Syrian opposition’s insistence on Assad’s removal as a
precondition for talks and criticized Washington for refusing to rule out
imposing a no-fly zone to help the rebels.
NEW INITIATIVE
Washington has been
pushing for the new diplomatic initiative, driven by worsening reports of
atrocities committed by both sides, by allegations that chemical weapons have
been used and by the emergence of al Qaeda allies among the rebels, raising
worries that the West could be helping its own enemies.
An exchange of fire
across the Turkish border on Thursday was a reminder that all Syria’s neighbors
risk being sucked in to a regional conflict.
Turkish police
arrested 12 suspected terrorists in raids. Turkish media reported they were
suspected members of the al Nusra front, a Syrian rebel force that has pledged
allegiance to al Qaeda.
Inside Syria, rebels
at Qusair and comrades encircled near Damascus face shortages of weapons. Fears
of the Islamists in the rebel ranks have deterred Western powers from supplying
them, despite wanting to see Assad fall.
The result, after
two years of fighting and more than 80,000 deaths, has been an increasingly
sectarian stalemate in which Assad has lost control of swathes of territory but
remains in power. Taking back Qusair would secure the government’s access to
the coastline populated by Assad’s minority fellow Alawites.
For the rebels,
mostly drawn from the Sunni Muslim majority, Qusair secures supply lines from
sympathizers in Lebanon and from further afield, notably Sunni-ruled states in
the Gulf.
Rebel commanders at
Qusair warned of dire consequences if help fails to arrive for men who have
been fighting house to house for more than a week against a force armed with
tanks and spearheaded by seasoned Lebanese fighters from Hezbollah.
“If all rebel
fronts do not move to stop this crime being led by Hezbollah and Assad’s
traitorous army of dogs … we will soon be saying that there was once a city
called Qusair,” the commanders said in a statement.
Shells were landing
by the minute and the attackers seemed to be advancing more quickly after
seizing a nearby air base.
DIVISIONS
Assad has benefitted
from divisions among his foes, split between fighters inside Syria and exiles
abroad, Islamists and liberals. Exiled members of the main opposition umbrella
group, the Syrian National Coalition, have spent a week arguing in Istanbul
over how to present a common front at the Geneva talks.
Islamist and liberal
wings of the opposition sought a compromise by offering liberals more seats on
the body intended to form a transitional government. Groups fighting inside
Syria demanded that they be granted half the seats.
Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Coalition seemed to be “doing everything
they can to prevent a political process from starting … and achieve military
intervention”.
“We consider
such approaches unacceptable,” he said, referring to rebel pleas for
Western weapons which persuaded Britain and France this week to end an EU arms
embargo.
His ministry also
chided Washington for keeping open the possibility of a no-fly zone. That, it
said, “cast doubt on the sincerity of the desire of some of our …
partners for success in international efforts” to end the war.
