Assad meets Arab ministers as 13 killed in clashes

At least 13 people died in clashes and strikes paralysed parts of Syria, as President Bashar al-Assad met Arab ministers seeking to end months of violence and his supporters held a mass rally. State television said Assad met an Arab League ministerial team visiting Syria to press him to hold talks with the opposition. It gave no details. In the central city of Homs, a hotbed of opposition to Assad, people held a general strike to protest against his crackdown on seven months of unrest, in which the United Nations says 3,000 people have been killed.
Residents and activists said most employees stayed at home and shops were closed in the city of one million. One resident said anti-Assad gunmen enforced the strike. Army gunfire, which killed four people on Wednesday, also kept people off the streets.
In the town of Hamrat, north of Homs, suspected army deserters killed nine soldiers in an attack on a bus with a rocket-propelled grenade, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. It was the latest attack in an armed insurgency emerging alongside the campaign of street protests. Assad faces international pressure over his crackdown, with the United States and the European Union slapping sanctions on Syrian oil exports and businesses, helping drive the economy into recession. “This will end with the fall of the regime. It is nearly unavoidable,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Wednesday. “But unfortunately it could take time because the situation is complex, because there is a risk of civil war between Syrian factions, because surrounding Arab countries do not want us to intervene,” he told French radio.
ARAB MISSION: In Umayyad Square in central Damascus, tens of thousands of people gathered for what has become a weekly show of support for Assad organised by authorities. State television showed them waving Syrian flags and portraits of the president, saying they were rallying under the slogan “Long live the homeland and its leader”.
The rally took place before envoys from six Arab nations arrived in Damascus for talks with Assad following their call on Oct. 16 for the opposition and government to hold a dialogue within 15 days at the League headquarters in Cairo. “What is hoped is that the violence will end, a dialogue will start and reforms will be achieved,” Arab League Secretary General Nabil Elaraby said of the delegation, which is led by Qatar and also includes Egypt, Algeria, Oman, Sudan and Yemen. Assad’s government says it is serious about political reform, which it asserts militants are trying to wreck. The opposition says Assad has no intention of relaxing his grip on power, pointing to an increase in killings, torture, arrests and assassinations. Human Rights Watch said the Arab mission should demand that Syria allow in independent civilian monitors. “The only way to make sure civilians are protected is to have on-the-ground monitors whose presence would inhibit abuse by the security services,” HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said.