Syria’s diplomatic isolation deepened Tuesday in the aftermath of an intense military assault on the city of Hama and other hotbeds of the nearly five-month-old antigovernment uprising.
Russia, an important ally of Syria, signaled new support for possible Security Council action, Syrian democracy activists received a warm welcome in Washington, Italy withdrew its ambassador to Damascus, and the United Nations Secretary General and top rights official both issued blunt rebukes of Syria President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
The developments came as news services reported Syrian artillery forces had begun shelling and shooting in Hama for the third day in a row. Reuters quoted unidentified Hama residents as saying shells hit at least two neighborhoods after nightly Ramadan prayers, and that protesters who had tried to mass in another part of Hama were scattered by bullet fire. Casualties were not known.
By some estimates, more than 100 Syrians have died since Sunday, the majority of them in Hama, as the Mr. Assad’s military forces expanded an effort to thoroughly crush the uprising against him. More than 1,400 Syrians have been killed since the uprising began in March.
At the United Nations, the Security Council convened for a second day to discuss possible action that would punish Syria. Russia and China, two of the Council’s permanent members, had threatened previously to veto a proposed resolution, but Kremlin officials in Moscow suggested on Tuesday that they might have softened their position. Whether that means Russia might now support a Security Council resolution or some lesser form of reprimand aimed at Syria remained unclear.
“We are not categorically against everything,” Sergei Vershinin, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Middle East and North Africa Department, told reporters in Moscow. “We are categorically against what doesn’t help bring forward a peaceful settlement.”
Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, made some of his strongest criticisms yet, saying through a spokesman that he believed the Syrian president had “lost all sense of humanity.”
Earlier in Geneva, Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, criticized what she called the Syrian government’s effort to shield the brutality of its crackdown from public view by banning outside news coverage and preventing a U.N. fact-finding mission from visiting.
“The world is watching, and the international community is gravely concerned,” she said, according to Agence France-Presse. “The government has been trying to keep the world blind about the alarming situation in the country, but they are not succeeding.”
In Washington, the Obama administration, which has toughened its line toward Syria in recent weeks, officially welcomed Syrian democracy advocates based in the United States. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with them on Tuesday as more American lawmakers called for punitive steps against Mr. Assad and his officials, beyond the economic and travel sanctions already imposed.
The American antipathy for Mr. Assad was also on display at the confirmation hearing in Washington for Robert S. Ford, the American ambassador to Syria, who called the crackdown on protesters “brutal” and “outrageous.” Mr. Ford, who has been serving in Syria since January under a recess appointment by President Obama, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the behavior of Mr. Assad’s government «has been atrocious» and that Syrians were already planning for the day when he is longer president.
At the United Nations, news of the escalating violence appeared to have broken a deadlock over Syria that had lasted since May. Diplomats spent Tuesday attempting to sort out exactly what form a condemnation might take.
Fuente: nytimes.com/