http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/04/2012425223022589689.html
http://news.antiwar.com/2012/04/25/france-un-should-prepare-to-attack-syria/
“We cannot allow ourselves to be defied by the current regime,” insisted French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who expected to put the war to a vote after a May 5 report by Kofi Annan on the “state of the ceasefire.”
| Blast in Syria's Hama kills many | |||||
Up to 69 people, many of them children, reported to have died in rocket attack on building in flashpoint city.
Last Modified: 26 Apr 2012 09:32
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| An explosion has destroyed a building in Syria's central city of Hama, reportedly killing up to 69 people, many of them children. The opposition Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) said security forces fired a rocket at the building in the Mashaa Attayar area on Wednesday. The Syrian state news agency reported that the explosion was caused by anti-government bomb-makers who had mishandled explosives.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based rights group, said that it was not sure what had caused the explosion, and it asked UN monitors in the area to investigate.
The group had initially cited witnesses as saying the explosion was caused by government shelling. On Thursday, it reported that 16 people had been killed in the explosion. Hama, a hotbed of revolt in the year-long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, has a small team of UN observers, who are preparing the way for a larger UN mission which will monitor the peace plan negotiated by the UN-Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan, two weeks ago.
Footage on YouTube of the blast showed a crowd of men pulling out the bloodied body of a young girl. Another video shows the collapsed remains of the building, as ash-covered men dig through piles of masonry looking for bodies amid the cries of onlookers. An activist who asked not to be named said the blast may have been an explosion from inside the building. Speaking to Al Jazeera, Abu Ghazi, an activist and a Hama resident, said the situation was deteriorating. "Many of the victims are women and children," he said. "People are dying because we don't have the necessary medical equipment or expertise to save those injured." Monitors criticised Abu Ghazi described Mashaa Attayar as a very poor neighbourhood where houses were built on top of each other. "Many of the houses host refugees from Homs," he said. "I believe this area was targeted because of the daily rallies that took place here."Asked whether the UN monitors could help to improve the situation for the people in Hama, Abu Ghazi said: "We don't really count on them. They are laughable."
Syrian authorities say they are committed to international mediator Kofi Annan's April 12 ceasefire agreement, but reserve the right to respond to what they say are continued attacks by "terrorist groups". Hama is a particularly sensitive site for the opposition. Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad, crushed an armed uprising in Hama 30 years ago, killing many thousands of people and flattening parts of Hama's old city. Elsewhere, the SOHR said that at least 17 civilians had been killed by government forces on Wednesday. Four security personnel were also killed, reports indicated. The government, meanwhile, said that a scurity officer had been killed by a roadside bomb in northwestern Syria, and that a similar bomb in Aleppo province had wounded three people, in Wednesday's violence. Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify reports of deaths in Syria due to strict government restrictions on journalists. French demand In a separate development on Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that a volunteer with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was shot dead and three others were wounded in the town of Douma, on the outskirts of Damascus, on Tuesday. "We are saddened and extremely shocked by the death of Mohammed al-Khadraa," Dr Abdul Rahman al-Attar, the president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, said in a statement released on Thursday. "This is the third fatal incident involving the Red Crescent in less than eight months." Khadraa was shot and killed on Tuesday in a vehicle clearly marked with the Red Crescent emblem, the statement said. The state news agency reported that Khadraa had been shot by members of an "armed terrorist group".
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http://news.antiwar.com/2012/04/25/france-un-should-prepare-to-attack-syria/
France: UN Should Prepare to Attack Syria
French FM Vows to Push for War at UN Security Council
by Jason Ditz, April 25, 2012
It may take quite some time for the UN to ratchet up its ceasefire monitoring mission in Syria, currently involving people, to the 300 agreed to by Syria last week. France isn’t planning to wait that long, however, and is already poised to push for a UN war against Syria within the next two weeks.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be defied by the current regime,” insisted French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe, who expected to put the war to a vote after a May 5 report by Kofi Annan on the “state of the ceasefire.”
The report’s content will likely be highly politicized, but with a number of UN Security Council members keen to use it as an excuse for war, it is virtually a foregone conclusion that it will be phrased vaguely enough to allow such a vote to proceed.
As for the monitoring team, the UN peacekeeping chief yesterday said that it would take a month to get the first 100 people on the ground. Without the full complement of monitors, a full ceasefire could never be confirmed, and unconfirmed reports of violence will almost certainly be spun as proof that the ceasefire is not working.
In many ways the war vote was the plan all along, with people calling the ceasefire “doomed” and France issuing statements condemning Syria for its failure before it even went into effect two weeks ago. The attitude from the West about the ceasefire has mostly been one of annoyance, irked that the “inevitable” collapse is taking so long and stalling their next effort to start a war.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/syria-running-out-of-cash-as-sanctions-take-toll-but-assad-avoids-economic-pain/2012/04/24/gIQAO2njfT_story.html
Syria running out of cash as sanctions take toll, but Assad avoids economic pain
Syria’s remaining cash reserves are quickly dwindling as the country’s anti-government uprising marks its 13th month, according to intelligence officials and financial analysts who describe a steady hollowing-out of the country’s economy in the face of sanctions.
The financial hemorrhaging has forced Syrian officials to stop providing education, health care and other essential services in some parts of the country, and has prompted the government to seek more help from Iran to prop up the country’s sagging currency, the analysts said. Revenue from Syrian oil, meanwhile, has almost dried up, with even China and India declining to accept the nation’s crude, they said.
At the same time, President Bashar al-Assad appears to have shielded himself and his inner circle from much of the pain of the sanctions and trade embargoes, which are driving up food and fuel prices for many of the country’s 20 million residents, U.S. and Middle Eastern analysts and financial experts say. Assad’s reserves and sizable black-market income are probably sufficient to keep the regime’s elite in power for several months and perhaps longer, intelligence officials and outside experts said.
The government is not expected to have trouble funding its military operations anytime soon.
“The economic pressure is severe, but unfortunately it’s not yet enough,” said a Middle Eastern intelligence official whose government closely monitors economic trends in Syria. The official, like several others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence on Syria’s economy.
The assessments of Syria’s fiscal deterioration come amid new efforts by Western governments to tighten the financial noose around the nation, which faces increasing economic and political isolation after brutally repressing anti-government activists for more than a year.
The European Union on Monday adopted measures prohibiting the sale of luxury goods to Syria, and the Obama administration ordered sanctions against individuals or firms that provide Assad with surveillance equipment and other technology that could be used to stifle dissent.
The new strictures are among more than a dozen rounds of sanctions since the start of the uprising in March 2011, and more are expected next month when representatives of as many as 75 countries gather in Washington to coordinate efforts to shut down Syria’s remaining revenue streams.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, in testimony to U.S. lawmakers last week, said that the sanctions are “undermining the financial lifeline of the regime,” cutting government income by nearly a third.
Western officials stress that the sanctions and an earlier embargo against Syrian oil imports are intended to target the country’s government and business elite, rather than ordinary people. But the measures have fueled a succession of fiscal shocks that are being felt across the Syrian economy, so far without directly endangering Assad’s 12-year rule, analysts say. These include not only a jump in consumer prices but a sharp drop in the value of the Syrian pound. Wages have stayed stagnant.
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