MOSCOW - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Sunday that Kofi Annan represented the last chance for avoiding a civil war in Syria and offered the UN-Arab League envoy Moscow’s full support.
Medvedev’s stark message to Moscow’s traditional ally came only hours after US President Barack Obama announced plans to send “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian rebels and new waves of violence swept the battle-scarred country.
Russia has been facing mounting Western and Arab calls to step up pressure and stop delivering arms to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after a year of violence that the opposition says has claimed more than 9,100 lives.
Moscow on Wednesday backed a non-binding Security Council statement after vetoing two previous resolutions. But it did so only after making sure the text contained no implicit threat of further action should Assad fail to comply.
Medvedev on Sunday appeared to be aiming his words at Assad directly by warning of dire consequences if Damascus ignored Annan’s peace plan.
“This may be the last chance for Syria to avoid a protracted and bloody civil war,” Medvedev told Annan at a meeting held in Moscow’s Vnukovo 2 airport before his departure for a summit in Seoul.
“We will be offering you our full support at any level at which we have a say,” said Medvedev.
“We very much hope that your efforts have a positive outcome.”
Annan replied that he expected Russia to play an “active” role in making sure that both sides follow the points of the UN Security Council-backed initiative.
The UN-Arab League envoy was expected in China on Tuesday to shore up backing for his efforts from the two UN Security Council members that had blocked previous efforts to condemn Assad’s regime.
China has also expressed support for Annan’s mission amid signs of quickly waning support for Assad from his traditional friends.
The UN Security Council-backed peace plan requires Assad to pull back his forces from protest cities and provide immediate humanitarian access to the thousands of civilians trapped inside.
Meanwhile, blasts rocked the flashpoint city of Homs on Sunday as Syria’s regime pressed its assault on protest hubs, while rebels staged a dawn attack on a military base in Damascus province, activists and monitors said.
There was “heavy shelling of Khaldiyeh, Hamidiyeh and Old Homs neighbourhoods by the regime’s army, and explosions shook the whole city,” the Local Coordination Committees said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said in a statement that four civilians were killed by security force fire in the Homs area.
Three, including an infant, died in Homs itself, while the fourth - a young girl - was killed in Rastan by heavy machinegun fire. The Britain-based monitoring group also said a member of the security forces was killed in Homs city.
In the city of Hama to the north, the Observatory reported that army shelling killed one civilian in the Murk district.
And in the southern town of Nawa, “tanks have entered the main streets, and heavy gunfire by regime forces is reported,” said the LCC, the main opposition activist group in Syria. Five troops and three mutinous soldiers were killed.