Activists called for fresh protests on Friday to urge nations to expel Syrian ambassadors and to further isolate Damascus, as neighbour Turkey joined Russia in warning of the risk of civil war. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, whose country was a major player behind NATO’s military intervention in Libya, was in Turkey for talks focused on Syria ahead of a tour of Arab states. “I say there is a risk of transforming into civil war,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, pointing to army defectors attacking key regime targets, a day after Moscow raised the same risk. “It is now the right time to stop this massacre, and therefore the Arab initiative is important,” he said. “If it is not successful of course there is always a risk of civil war or high level tension in Syria.”
Juppe, for his part, said France and Turkey had an “overlapping approach” to the crisis in Syria. Activists called for fresh anti-regime protests on Friday to urge countries around the world to expel Syrian ambassadors. “They are the ambassadors of crime. Expel them, oh free ones,” the Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the main groups behind the protests, said. The Arab League on Wednesday gave the Syrian regime three days to halt the deadly violence against its people or face economic sanctions.
The Arab bloc has also suspended Syria’s membership over its violent crackdown on dissent. Meanwhile the United States disagreed with a Russian assessment that attacks by renegade Syrian troops risked plunging Syria into civil war, blaming the regime in Damascus for the violence. “We think that’s an incorrect assessment,” US State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told reporters after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned of civil war in Syria. “We don’t view it as a civil war,” he said. Despite the US position, analysts and opposition leaders say the risk of civil war cannot be ruled out. “We are at a turning point,” Burhan Ghalioun, who heads the opposition Syrian National Council. “One path can lead us to freedom and dignity, the other toward a civil war that the regime keeps pushing for in order to undercut the revolution,” said Ghalioun, a professor of political sociology in France. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday called for “restraint and caution” over the escalating standoff in Syria between the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition. “We are calling for restraint and caution. This is our position,” Putin told a news conference.
SYRIAN FORCES KILL 11 IN FRIDAY PROTESTS: Syrian security forces shot dead at least 11 people on Friday as they opened fire to on several rallies to disperse protesters. Meanwhile SANA, the state news agency, quoted an official source as saying two members of the security forces were killed and an officer was critically wounded in a bomb blast in the restive central city of Hama.
