DC to Assad: Transition or get out Syrian army presses scorched earth campaign

DAMASCUS, June 13, (Agencies): The Syrian army pressed a scorched earth campaign in the northern
mountains on Monday even as state media said two top officials had been banned from foreign travel in a state probe into their role in a previous bloody crackdown.
Washington called on President Bashar al-Assad to lead a transition or leave power, as Western powers expressed mounting frustration at the failure of the UN Security Council to agree a resolution condemning his government’s crackdown.
Refugees among the thousands who have fled into neighbouring Turkey said troops were burning crops and slaughtering livestock in villages near the border.
State television said the army was pursuing “armed gangs” into the woods and mountains around Jisr al-Shughur after storming the protest hotbed at the weekend.
Human rights activists reported heavy gunfire and explosions in the town throughout Sunday after troops backed by helicopter gunships and around 200 tanks launched a two-pronged dawn assault.
On Monday, intermittent gunfire was heard as troops launched search operations in the village of Uram al-Joz, east of Jisr al-Shughur and in the Jebel al-Zawiya mountains further south, the activists said.
The majority of the town’s 50,000 residents had fled in the week-long build-up to the crackdown.
More than 6,800 have sought refuge in Turkey, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the town, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency reported on Monday.
Britain said that newly re-elected Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had expressed support for its tabling with European allies of a UN Security Council draft resolution condemning the Syrian crackdown.
“Prime Minister Erdogan welcomed the UK’s efforts to put pressure on the regime through a Security Council resolution and they agreed that Britain and Turkey should work hand in hand to achieve this,” a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said.
The United States is backing the European draft resolution but veto-wielding Security Council permanent members Russia and China have so far blocked the draft, and several non-permanent members have expressed reservations.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that Washington condemned the violence being perpetrated in Syria “in the strongest possible terms.”
“President Assad needs to engage in political dialogue. A transition needs to take place. If President Assad does not lead that transition then he should step aside,” Carney said.
France’s UN ambassador Gerard Araud said that the diplomatic wrangling, which has now gone on for two weeks, was costing lives.
“In that time 400 people, including women and children, have died, sometimes under torture,” he said. “Thousands of refugees have fled Syria.”
Some of those who have made it across the border into Turkey described how the Syrian army had embarked on a scorched earth policy in Jisr al-Shughur and other villages in Idlib province, which has long been a hotbed of hostility towards the Damascus government.
But while some troops had appeared to be bent on destruction, others tried to defend the townsfolk and battles flared among the army on Sunday when parts of a tank division defected and then set up base by bridges into the town, they said.
“The troops are divided. Four tanks defected and they began to fire on one another,” said 35-year-old Abdullah, who fled Jisr al-Shughur on Sunday and sneaked over the border into Turkey in order to find food.
Ali, another Syrian refugee who made it to Turkey, also described evidence of a rift within the ranks.
“There is now a split within the army and you have a group who are trying to protect the civilians,” the 27-year-old told AFP.
Syrian troops rounded up hundreds of people in a sweep through villages near Jisr al-Shughour on Monday, fleeing residents said, after President Bashar al-Assad’s army retook the rebellious town.
Nearly 7,000 Syrians have already fled the region around Jisr al-Shughour, seeking sanctuary in neighbouring Turkey, while thousands more are sheltering close to the frontier in rural areas just inside Syria, activists say.
Monday’s wave of arrests followed an army assault on the northwestern town, with troops backed by helicopters and tanks regaining control one week after authorities said 120 security personnel were killed in fighting they blamed on “armed groups”.
Libya
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi ruled out giving up power, in comments reportedly made during a chess game, as fighting between his forces and rebels seeking to topple him raged in Libya’s east and west.
Mikhail Margelov, the special envoy of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said in Moscow on Monday meanwhile he would visit Tripoli next week to hold talks on the Libya conflict.
State television broadcast footage of Gaddafi playing chess with head of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who later said he had easily got the better of the Libyan leader on the board during Sunday’s game in Tripoli.
The Russian eccentric who once claimed he hosted extraterrestrials, also sat down for a game of chess with Gaddafi’s son Muhammad and the two played the Sicilian defence, Russia’s Interfax news agency said.
“The meeting lasted around two hours, we played some chess with Gaddafi,” Ilyumzhinov, who is on a visit to Tripoli in his capacity as FIDE president, told Interfax.
“Gaddafi stated that he is not going to leave Libya, stressing that it is his motherland and a land where his children and grandchildren died. He also said that he does not understand which post he needs to step down from.”
“I am neither premier nor president nor king. I do not hold any post in Libya and therefore I have no position which I should give up,” Ilyumzhinov quoted Gaddafi as telling him.
A Libyan doctor says 23 rebels have been killed in fighting outside the eastern oil town of Brega.
Suleiman Rafathi, a doctor at the hospital in the town of Ajdabiya where the casualties were brought, says 26 people also were wounded in the battle Monday about 22 miles (35 kilometers) east of Brega.
The front lines between Brega and Ajdabiya have been relatively quiet in recent weeks, while fighting has raged in western Libya between forces loyal to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi and rebels seeking to overthrow him.
No further details of the fighting were immediately available.
Government artillery rained down on rebel forces Monday but failed to stop their advance into key ground west of their stronghold at Libya’s major port. As fighting raged for a fourth day, Germany’s foreign minister paid a surprise visit to the rebel’s de facto capital.
Guido Westerwelle met with officials of the Transitional National Council, telling members of the nascent rebel government that Germany recognized the council as “the legitimate representative of the Libyan people”
That position is similar to that of the United States, which has stopped short of outright diplomatic recognition of the council. The move was, nevertheless, another big diplomatic boost for the rebels and their four-month uprising to end Muammar Gaddafi’s 40-year rule in the oil-rich North African country. Germany refused to participate in the NATO air mission over Libya and withheld support for the no-fly zone.
Another member of Gaddafi’s regime has defected and fled the country, two Libyan analysts in London said Monday, as fighting continued between government troops and rebel forces.
Sassi Garada, one of the first men to join Gaddafi when he took power more than 40 years ago, left Libya through Tunisia, according to Noman Benotman, a Libyan analyst in London who was in contact with his friends and family. Guma el-Gamaty, UK organizer for Libya’s interim council, also confirmed the defection.
There were initial reports that Garada fled to Britain, where he has several family members, but Benotman said Garada was in Switzerland.
British officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss immigration and security matters, said they could not confirm whether Garada was in the UK. Swiss Foreign ministry spokeswoman Carole Waelti told AP the government was “not aware of the possible presence of Garada in Switzerland.”
The United Arab Emirates has given Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s ambassador 72 hours to leave, a day after it recognised the rebels’ National Transitional Council, a diplomat told AFP on Monday.
“The UAE foreign ministry has informed the ambassador of Gaddafi’s regime in Abu Dhabi that it now recognises the NTC as a legitimate Libyan government. Therefore, his diplomatic mission in the country ends within 72 hours and he must leave,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.
The Libyan envoy was told that “the embassy will be handed over to the NTC which the UAE deals with as a government.”
A foreign ministry official told AFP that the oil-rich Gulf state “is taking all measures needed to implement its recognition of the NTC.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday urged African leaders to abandon Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, saying it was time to live up to their pledges to promote democracy across the continent.
Clinton, the first US secretary of state ever to address the 53-member African Union, said unreformed African leaders were themselves at risk from the same tide of democracy sweeping the Middle East, proclaiming “the status quo is broken and the old ways of governing are no longer acceptable.”
“It is true that Gaddafi has played a major role in providing financial support for many African nations and institutions, including the AU,” Clinton said in her speech at the AU’s headquarters in Addis Ababa.
“But it has become clear that we are long past the time when he can remain in power.”
Clinton urged African states — many with longtime diplomatic and financial ties to the oil-rich Libyan strongman — to join the international coalition demanding his exit as the condition for a ceasefire.
Bahrain
A Bahraini military court on Monday postponed a hearing in the trial of 20 doctors, seized during crackdowns on anti-government demonstrations, after their lawyers complained they had been tortured in custody.
The doctors were among dozens of medical staff rounded up in the Sunni-led Gulf kingdom, which hosts the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, following protests that erupted in February among the country’s Shiite majority.
The detainees, who face charges ranging from stealing medicine to stockpiling weapons to taking over a hospital, entered pleas of not guilty on Monday.
But a second part of the hearing, where the defence could have cross-examined prosecution witnesses, was deferred to June 20 over the lawyers’ challenges to the court’s jurisdiction and requests that their clients undergo independent medical examination.
“They were forced to confess. I am 100 percent sure that my clients are being tortured,” one lawyer, who asked not to be named, said after the session, which was observed by US and other foreign diplomats.
Relatives of some of the defendants told Reuters they were being prevented from bringing clothing to detainees, whom they believed were being kept naked to humiliate them and produce confessions.
Bahraini officials deny allegations of systematic torture of detainees and say that any instances of abuse will be investigated and prosecuted.
Officials also contest opposition figures suggesting that hundreds of Bahrainis are undergoing trial in military court for their alleged role in the demonstrations.
The doctors’ lawyers said they had been denied access to counsel during initial hearings that prosecutors attended.
Bahrain’s prosecutor-general has previously said lawyers can meet with detainees after an initial hearing, devoted in part to determining whether defendants have counsel.
The protests, which were crushed in March, saw demands for an end to sectarian discrimination that Bahrain’s Shiites say they face, as well as calls for a constitutional monarchy. A few Shiite groups demanded the complete abolition of the monarchy.
Bahraini authorities say the demonstrators had a sectarian agenda and were backed by Shiite power Iran. The activists deny this.
Yemen
At least 140 people have been killed in two weeks of clashes between Yemeni security forces and suspected al-Qaeda gunmen in the southern city of Zinjibar, a military official said on Monday.
“At least 80 security officials including soldiers have been killed and more than 200 wounded in clashes with al-Qaeda militants since Zinjibar fell under the (al-Qaeda) network’s grip” in late May, said the military official.
“More than 60 al-Qaeda militants, among them local leaders, have also been killed and at least 90 others wounded.”
Gunmen seized control of much of Zinjibar in late May.
Security officials say the militants are al-Qaeda fighters, but the political opposition accuses the government of embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh of inventing a jihadist threat to head off Western pressure on his 33-year rule.
Yemen’s acting president agreed on Monday with opposition parties to begin discussions on how to transfer power from the country’s embattled president, an opposition spokesman said.
The official, Abdullah Oubal, said the agreement provided for the opposition and President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s ruling party to open a dialogue to find a way to ease Saleh out of office in accordance with proposals put forward by Yemen’s Gulf neighbors. Saleh has publicly accepted the proposals in the past, but has been evasive about implementing them.
Monday’s agreement may not end the country’s political impasse or prevent renewed clashes between forces loyal to Saleh and armed tribesmen opposed to his rule. However, it suggests that the acting president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, is exercising his constitutional powers despite the vast influence wielded by Saleh’s inner circle and family.
Yemen said on Monday it arrested several people for attempting to kill President Ali Abdullah Saleh, whose unresolved political fate has brought the impoverished neighbour of rich Gulf states to the brink of civil war.
The official newspaper of Saleh’s party said several people suspected of involvement in an attempt to kill him had been arrested and were being questioned, in an apparent reference to the attack that wounded Saleh and members of his cabinet.
It said interrogations had revealed “important, grave” facts “related to al-Mushtarak” — an element of the Arabic name for the Joint Meetings coalition of opposition parties seeking his immediate departure. The paper provided no further details.
The report came after the collapse of another attempt — with US and European backing — to resolve Yemen’s political crisis, when Saleh’s deputy ignored the opposition’s demand that he renounce all claim to power immediately.
Yemen’s wounded President Ali Abdullah Saleh, recovering in a Riyadh hospital from a bomb blast, is to address his people “very soon”, the defence ministry’s website reported on Monday.
Health Minister Abdul Karim Rasei, who visited Saleh on Saturday, said the embattled president would “very soon speak directly through the media to the Yemeni people,” the website 26sep.net reported.
The president, wounded in an attack on the mosque in his palace compound in Sanaa on June 3, is “improving each day and is in good health,” said the minister.
Anti-regime protesters on Monday gave Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi 24 hours to join a transitional council to rule Yemen, as the army battled suspected al-Qaeda fighters in the south.
But as young protesters prepared for a post-President Ali Abdullah Saleh era, the defence ministry said Yemen’s wounded leader, recovering in a Riyadh hospital from a bomb blast, was to address the nation “very soon.”
Under the constitution, Hadi is caretaker president in Saleh’s absence.
Activists of the “Youth Revolution” movement, in a statement, urged Hadi to “clarify his position in the coming 24 hours and (state) whether or not he will take part in the transitional council.”
“We will work with all forces to form the council in the hours that follow the ultimatum given to Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi,” they said, adding the council would lead Yemen for a maximum nine months of transitional rule.
Airstrikes targeting Muslim militants in control of a southern Yemeni town killed three of the extremists on Monday, military and medical officials said.
Four months of massive anti-government protests across Yemen have weakened the central government, and the capture of two southern towns by militants thought to include al-Qaeda members has raised concern that the organization could take advantage of the chaos.
The Yemeni officials said the airstrikes struck Jaar, one of two militant-held towns in the province of Abyan. The other town is Abyan’s capital, Zinjibar.
President Ali Saleh, Yemen’s leader of nearly 33 years, is in Saudi Arabia for treatment from wounds suffered in a rocket attack that targeted his compound in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. His forces are squaring up against tribesman loyal to a one-time ally who defected to the protesters’ side in March.
The two sides fought fierce battles with artillery, mortars and rockets in Sanaa earlier this month. A fragile cease-fire is holding the peace in the capital.