Russia: Won’t shoo Assad out

Other nations telling Moscow they’d take him in, official says

— The foreign minister of Russia, which is among Syria’s most reliable allies, said Saturday that several countries were offering asylum to President Bashar Assad to get him to leave Syria but that Moscow would not mediate on their behalf, according to Russian news services.

“Several countries in the region have turned to us and suggested, ‘Tell Assad we are ready to fix him up,’” the foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, told reporters who accompanied him on a flight home from the Russia-European Union summit meeting in Brussels, in comments carried by the Interfax and RIA-Novosti news agencies. “And we answered, ‘What do we have to do with it? If you have such plans, approach him directly.’

“If there are people wishing to give him some kind of guarantees, be our guest,” he said. “We will be the first to cross ourselves and say, ‘Thank God, the carnage is over.’ But whether this will end the carnage — that is far from obvious. It is not obvious at all.”

But Lavrov added that “Assad has no intention of quitting. He refuses these proposals, whatever we might like. Irrespective of who tells him — Russia, China or someone else.”

Assad vowed in an interview from Damascus with Russian state broadcaster RT last month that “I have to live and die in Syria.”

Lavrov went on to cite “very serious and well founded predictions from Western intelligence services suggesting that the fall of the regime will hardly bring an end to this drama and tragedy, that instead the battle will continue with new force.”

In a bid to revive mediation efforts, Russia has invited Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint special representative of the United Nations and the League of Arab States, to Moscow this week, according to Lavrov. Russia has also asked Mouaz al-Khatib, head of the main Syrian opposition grouping, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, to hold talks with Russian representatives to discuss a peaceful solution, he said.

Lavrov also said the Syrian government has pulled its chemical weapons together to one or two locations from several arsenals across the country to keep them safe amid the rebel onslaught.

Lavrov’s comments follow recent signals from Russia that it sees the military balance shifting but has not changed its strong opposition to international intervention in Syria. The comments have come as rebel fighters claim gains in the war, pushing aggressively toward government strongholds near Damascus, the capital, and in the central Syrian city of Hama. Last week, opposition fighters tried to occupy the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp, which they had planned to use as a staging ground for attacks on central Damascus, setting off a fierce battle that caused most of the camp’s residents to flee.

On Saturday afternoon, a car bomb detonated in the Damascus suburb of Qaboun, killing at least five, destroying buildings and wounding scores of people on a commercial street.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.

Also in Damascus, the state-run news agency SANA said gunmen assassinated a cameraman for the government’s TV station.

Fighting continued on Saturday in central Syria, where rebels have been attacking government checkpoints and positions to cut the military’s supply routes to the northern Idlib province. In a video posted on the Internet on Friday, rebel fighters threatened violence against the residents of two Christian villages in Hama province if they did not evict loyalists known as shabiha.

In the video, a rebel said that a rebel group that raided one village was attacked by “shabiha hiding behind houses” and that the rebels withdrew “to spare civilians.” If residents did not evict the government loyalists, the fighter warned, the rebels would “direct our artillery” at their hiding places.

The warning was met with alarm by a resident of one of the villages, al-Suqaylabiyah. The resident, a doctor who is currently in Turkey, said that the village was 95 percent Christian and that most residents, some of whom, he said, had been given arms by the government, had nonetheless chosen not to take sides. The appearance of the men in the video — “very Islamic and militarized,” he said — was unlikely to win the rebels any support.

Regarding action elsewhere, the Syrian army said in a statement carried on staterun TV that it had repelled a rebel attack on a military base that killed a regimental commander in the Damascus suburb of Chebaa.

Both Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin of Russia have said in recent days that they predict a long period of instability in Syria.

On Saturday, Lavrov said that he believed that both U.S. and European supporters of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces were losing their ability to influence antigovernment forces in Syria, according to news services.

“We ask the Americans, you promised us that you would be able to draw them away from their militant and hard-line position toward the Geneva platform,” he said. “What have you done to make that happen? They are silent.

“We also asked our friends from the European Union, who also recognized that coalition as the representatives of the Syrian people,” he added. “They are also silent.”

In another development, 11 rebel groups said they have formed a new coalition, the Syrian Islamic Front.

A statement issued by the new group, dated Friday and posted on a militant website Saturday, described it as “a comprehensive Islamic front that adopts Islam as a religion, doctrine, approach and conduct.”

Several rebel groups have declared their own coalitions in Syria, including one calling itself an “Islamic state” in the embattled northern city of Aleppo.

The statement said the new group will work to avoid differences or disputes with the other Islamic groups.

Information for this article was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Ellen Barry, Hala Droubi and Hwaida Saad of The New York Times; by Bassem Mroue,Vladimir Isachenkov, Maamoun Youssef, Alblert Aji of The Associated Press; and by Ilya Arkhipov, Henry Meyer and Glen Carey of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/23/2012

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