Washington – The White House estimated Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government is on the verge of collapse and called on the United Nations to adopt a resolution that would facilitate a political transition in Syria.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters that Assad’s fall in inevitable, noting that the Damascus regime has lost control over the country.
Opposition groups reported that some 100 people were killed at the hand of the security forces on Monday, primarily in Homs and on the outskirts of Damascus, where the Assad’s troops clashed with rebels’ army.
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice accused the Security Council of “inaction” and “neglect” during 10 months of Syrian violence, urging the global body to endorse an Arab League plan for a political transition there.
Rice was speaking a day before Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby and Qatar’s prime minister are due to plead with the 15-nation Security Council to back the league’s plan for Assad to transfer powers to his deputy to prepare for free elections.
“We have seen the consequences of neglect and inaction by this council over the course of the last 10 months, not because the majority of the council isn’t eager to act – it has been,” Rice told reporters.
“But there have been a couple of very powerful members who have not been willing to see that action take place,” she said. “That may yet still be the case.”
Rice was referring to Russia and China, which vetoed a European-drafted Security Council resolution in October that would have condemned Syria and threatened it with possible sanctions.
Clinton: Violence must end
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who will attend Tuesday’s council meeting with Elaraby, along with French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and British Foreign Secretary William Hague, also urged the council to adopt a European-Arab draft resolution endorsing the Arab League plan.
“The Security Council must act and make clear to the Syrian regime that the world community views its actions as a threat to peace and security,” Clinton said in a statement. “The violence must end, so that a new period of democratic transition can begin.”
Clinton voiced concern that if the crisis in Syria isn’t stopped, it could spread.
“The longer the Assad regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region,” she said.
Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said last week that he was willing to engage on the European-Arab draft resolution, but said the draft was unacceptable in its current state.
Diplomats said Elaraby would be meeting with Churkin behind closed doors in New York to explain to him that vetoing the draft resolution would be tantamount to vetoing the Arab world.
Earlier, a French diplomat said that at least 10 members of the Council support a resolution calling for a political transition in Syria.
A vote on the draft resolution is unlikely before Thursday or Friday, Western diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
Who knows who these ‘civilians’ are?? How can anyone rely on US big-lie media, which consistently describes Israeli, Christian, or insufficiently orthodox Muslim leaders as ‘killing civilians’ when they are merely defending their regimes from NATO backed jihadists??
One would really need an objective information source before concluding that Assad (or formerly Gaddafi) is killing ‘innocent civilians’.
In a war situation it is necessary to kill civilians in order to defeat the enemy. No war was ever won otherwise. Tell me where if it was!
Catarina you are just repeating the vile propaganda of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign against Israel in Gaza and Lebanon.
You are waging war in Syria indirectly against Israel.
With this political line I would ban you from all Jewish sites.
What should be the position of Jews?
read this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Syria
Tunisia, Egypt and Libya TEACHES US that if the majority Sunni take power then there will be massacres of Christians and there will be no Christians OR OTHER MINORITIES left in Syria
And Muslim Brotherhood Sharia Law will rukle supreme
That is what Obama and Clinton are in league with just as Reagan was in league with the Taliban against Socialist Afghanistan many years ago.
Felix, are you saying Assad did not order his army to kill civilians? Because no matter what else is true or is not true, justice will not be served until he is punished.
Catarin you talk complete crap. Why not sign up officially for the Empire/Jihad Alliance against Assad and go out there and put your sorry ass on the line for NATO?
I saw in the news that Assad tried to smuggle his wife, kids and a few other relatives out of Syria to safety a few days ago, and their caravan met with obstructions from the opposition. A gun battle ensued, and Assad’s family was forced to turn back.
Nothing will save Assad. After the murders of so many innocent civilians, he will not find safety and peace anywhere except perhaps Iran.
when Mrs Clinton tells the world that the UN Resolution now being fought against by Russia will be different to Libya, we reply:
The legitimacy of the Quartet after Syria:
The Quartet, of America (Obama and Hillary Clinton), the UN (South Korean Ban Ki Moon), the EU (Tony Blair and “lady” Ashton), and Russia (Putin) are always telling Jewish Israel to voluntarily surrender to the savage muslims, shrink Jewish Israel down so much that it is completely vulnerable to the muslims, and depend on “muslim mercy”.
Meantime, the tyrannical minority regime in Syria is killing thousands of its own people on a daily basis. If Jewish Israel were doing this to muslims, there would be neverending cries of “worse than the nazis, international war criminals, crimes against humanity, genocide, International Criminal Court, UN investigations, Security Council condemnations, worldwide anti-Israel demonstrations, etc.”
But since muslims are only doing these things to other muslims, it’s just something to be expected, and no big deal.
This attitude is a form of “paternalistic racism.” When the southerners applied it to their black slaves, they held the blacks had too low an intelligence to be productive without control and guidance from the superior whites. When the West expresses these views towards muslims, they hold that the muslims are “potentially smart and capable, but, because of their cultural baggage, they are not “enlightened” like the Westerners are, so that they are not responsible for their actions, at least until they have been “educated in the ways of Western Enlightenment”.
So what is Jewish Israel (or any thinking person) to conclude from this? The “enlightened liberalism” espoused by the Europeans and the Democrats in America is a fanatic, dogmatic, delusional (and suicidal) cult. You can argue with them, but it will never change their views. You just have to humor them and wait for them to self-destruct. (Netanyahu’s strategy?)
Good. Its time someone stood up to the arab world.
I frankly don’t care how many of his own people assad kills. The only country in the region I care about is Israel.
Again it is the combination of Russia and China that is blocking progress. Likewise in the case of Iran. Russia exports more oil and gas than Iran. China depends on imports. So it is not a simple quest for oil that is driving this. And Syria has tiny amounts of oil.
It’s East against West in some new kind of Great Game. Israel, Iran, and Syria are pawns, like it or not. If not pawns, maybe knights.
Is it the specter of communism? Or maybe its ghost?