Dubai France said it will propose making United Nations envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan for Syria obligatory by invoking the UN’s “Chapter 7” provision, describing the conflict there as a “civil war”, while Britain said Syria was on the verge of collapse.
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said he hoped Russia would agree to using Chapter 7, a measures which can authorise the use of force, and he said that a no-fly zone was another option under discussion.
“We propose making the implementation of the Annan plan compulsory,” he told a news conference. “We need to pass to the next speed at the Security Council and place the Annan plan under Chapter 7 - that is to say make it compulsory under pain of very heavy sanctions.”
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said that Syria was on the verge of collapse and that he would be holding urgent talks with his Russian counterpart today to ensure implementation of the peace plan.
“Syria is on the edge of a collapse or of a deadly sectarian civil war,” he said in Kabul where he will attend a regional conference on Afghanistan.
He said he would meet Russia’s Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines of the conference to persuade Russia to use its leverage with the Syrian government to implement Annan’s plan.
Lavrovm, meanwhile, accused the United States of supplying weapons to rebels, which is worsening the conflict.
Lavrov’s accusation followed a charge by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that she had information Russia was sending to Syria “attack helicopters ... which will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”
With violence ramping up, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said Tuesday that the conflict had escalated into a civil war, prompting a denial from the Syrian Foreign Ministry which expressed “astonishment.” The ministry said the statement lacked objectivity, was “far from reality” and inaccurate.
“Syria is not witnessing a civil war but rather an armed conflict to uproot terrorism and confront killings, kidnappings, bombings ... and other brutal acts by armed terrorist groups,” the ministry said. Syrian authorities often refer to rebels fighting to oust Al Assad as terrorists.
In Syria, hundreds of troops, backed by tanks, thrust into the eastern city of Deir Al Zor yesterday, opposition activists said, calling it a major offensive to root out rebels in the capital of the oil producing province on the border with Iraq.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says three aid workers suffered minor injuries in Syria when an explosion hit their convoy.
Also yesterday, Syrian forces pushed out scores of rebels holed up in a rebellious area near the Mediterranean coast and state television said they retook control of the region following eight days of fierce shelling and clashes.
The mountainous Haffa region is one of several areas where government forces are battling rebels for control in escalating violence. Recovering it is particularly important to the regime because the town is about 30km from President Bashar Al Assad’s hometown of Kardaha in Latakia province.
