Anti-regime protesters called on Friday for foreign military intervention in Syria, as UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan prepared to brief a divided UN Security Council on his peace efforts.
Ahead of UN participation in a Syrian-led humanitarian mission to protest cities at the weekend, Annan was to give a videoconference briefing to the Security Council from Geneva at 1400 GMT on his talks with Assad in Damascus. Gulf Arab states, meanwhile, said they were following Riyadh’s lead in closing their Damascus embassies in protest at the violence, which monitors said Thursday on the first anniversary of its start has cost more than 9,100 lives. Activists called on their Facebook page, Syrian Revolution 2011, for nationwide protests after weekly Muslim prayers to demand “immediate military intervention by the Arabs and Muslims, followed by the rest of the world.”
“The people want military intervention, the Free Syrian Army to be armed, and the fall of the regime,” several thousand demonstrators chanted in Aleppo in northern Syria, an activist at the scene told AFP in Beirut by telephone. Other protests took place in the flashpoint provinces of Homs in central Syria and Daraa, in the south. Huge rallies in support of President Bashar al-Assad were held in Damascus and other major cities on Thursday to mark the anniversary. But numbers have fallen at anti-regime demonstrations as security forces seize protest centres.
Iraq PM insists Iran flights to Syria carrying aid
Premier Nuri al-Maliki insisted Friday that all items transported through Iraq to Syria were humanitarian goods after a US newspaper reported Iran was moving weapons to Syria via Iraqi air space. “Iraq does not allow its land or its skies to be a passage for weapons in any direction, and from any source,” Maliki said in a statement released by his office. He said shipments going through Iraq were “only carrying humanitarian goods, not weapons.” Maliki said Iraq was “pushing towards finding a political solution to the Syrian situation… (and) to avoid more bloodshed.” The Washington Times reported on Thursday that Iraq refused “several” US requests to stop Iranian cargo flights bound for Syria, citing an unnamed US official. The newspaper said Iraq was made aware of intelligence obtained through intercepted air traffic communications that the planes were transporting weapons, and added the US requested Iraq either stop the flights or allow them to be inspected. The report comes just weeks before Baghdad is due to host an Arab League summit on March 29, with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s bloody year-long crackdown on domestic opponents expected to be high on the agenda. While Iraq has largely shied away from imposing punitive measures against Syria, Maliki has called for “change” and “free elections” there.