China joins Russia in staying away from Syria talks

China joined Russia on Thursday in boycotting a “Friends of Syria” meeting aimed at coordinating efforts to stop violence in the country, where three senior regime officers are among the latest to be killed.
In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told reporters China would not attend the Paris gathering on Friday.
“(China) at present does not consider attending the meeting,” he told reporters.
Russia, a long-time ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has also said it will stay away from the meeting after accusing the West of seeking to distort a weekend deal by world powers in Geneva aimed at achieving a transition of power.
The Paris meeting follows one in Tunis in February and another in April in Istanbul, both of which called in vain for tougher action against Assad’s government.
The United States, France, Britain, Germany and Arab nations Saudi Arabia and Qatar are leaders of the “Friends of Syria, which has more than 60 members, including most EU states and many Arab League countries.
China backed Russia in Geneva on insisting that Syrians must decide how the transition should be carried out, rather than allow others to dictate their fate, and did not rule out Assad remaining in power in some form.
The West has said Assad should not be part of any new unity government.
China did not attend the previous two “Friends of Syria” meetings either.
On the ground, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported at least 13 people killed nationwide on Thursday, a day after 99 people died in violence that has plagued the country for nearly 16 months.
The Britain-based watchdog has estimated that more than 16,500 people have been killed since the Syria uprising erupted in mid-March last year.
It is not possible to independently verify death tolls for the conflict since the United Nations at the end of 2011 ceased compiling such figures.
The Observatory said six people, including a couple and their child, were killed when regime forces bombarded the town of Maaret al-Numan in the northwestern province of Idlib.
It also said a child was killed in Palmyra, home to one of the country’s most famous tourist sites.
Palmyra’s pristine Roman ruins set off by dramatic desert sunrises and sunsets have earned it the status of a UNESCO protected World Heritage site.
The Observatory said gunmen shot dead a Syrian general and two other senior officers on Wednesday, a day which also saw another two generals killed in combat and in which civilians were the majority of the 99 people killed.
Another general became the 15th such high-ranking officer to flee the conflict-wracked nation when he defected to Turkey on Wednesday, a Turkish diplomat said.
Syria’s northern neighbour, a former ally of Assad, has become home to many defectors, who have formed the Free Syrian Army in opposition to the regime in Damascus.
Around 35,000 displaced Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey since the start of the uprising in mid-March 2011.
One of the most prominent desertions from the Assad regime was the June 22 defection of a pilot who landed his fighter in Jordan.
“These defections hurt the morale of the army,” Riad Kahwaji, who heads the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis (INEGMA), told AFP.
The scale of defections from one of the largest armies in the Arab world is hard to quantify, despite widespread videos and news reports of dissent.
Meanwhile, Syrians must be able to decide their own fate free of impositions by other countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a statement posted on his official website on Thursday.
He also accused the United States and its allies of opposing Assad’s regime with the goal of dominating the Middle East and propping up Israel.
“The main enemies… are trying to revive their domination of the region and to save the occupying regime from destruction,” he told visiting Syrian parliamentary speaker Jihad al-Lahham on Wednesday, according to the website.
Meanwhile, whistle-blower Internet website WikiLeaks said on Thursday it was publishing more than two million emails from Syrian political figures dating back to 2006.
“Just now … WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria files, more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies dating from August 2006 to March 2012,” spokeswoman Sarah Harrison said in London.