Western powers vowed on Thursday to boost pressure on the Syrian regime and push it to allow in vital humanitarian aid at a global conference on Friday to tackle the country’s increasingly bloody crisis.
As the flashpoint city of Homs came under renewed shelling, officials said Friday’s “Friends of Syria” meeting of over 60 nations in Tunisia will also seek to support the Syrian opposition in its efforts to build a unified front. France said the meeting will cement Syria’s “growing isolation,” while Britain said it will push for a tightening of the “stranglehold” on the regime and a US official said it will demand that Damascus allow in humanitarian aid. But the Arab League-organised conference of senior Arab and Western diplomats, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be marked by a Russian boycott and the absence of China.
Both countries have frustrated Western and Arab efforts to rein in President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, including by vetoing UN Security Council resolutions on the crisis. Russia said Thursday that Beijing and Moscow remained opposed to foreign intervention in Syria, while China’s influential People’s Daily warned this week that Western support for Syrian rebels could risk “large-scale civil war”. Activists say more than 7,600 people, mostly civilians, have died since Assad’s hardline regime launched a crackdown to snuff out a revolt that began with peaceful protests in March 2011. Syrian forces launched another massive bombardment of rebel districts in Homs on Thursday, pounding the city for the 20th straight day, activists said.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Friday’s talks will aim to “increase pressure on the regime” and send a clear signal not just to Assad but also to the countries that have backed him. The meeting “will be a very strong symbol of the growing isolation of the regime and the isolation of those countries that continue to block all solutions at the Security Council,” he told London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat. A US official said Clinton discussed a “unified humanitarian proposal” with counterparts on the sidelines of an international conference on Somalia in London on Thursday.
