Syrian conflict a growing peril, U.N. envoy says

UNITED NATIONS — Syria’s civil war is worsening and there is no prospect of a quick end to the violence, international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said Monday in a gloomy assessment to the U.N. Security Council.

The new envoy leavened his message, however, saying he was crafting a new plan that he hoped could break the impasse, but refused to give details or say when it would be ready.

Despite President Bashar Assad’s refusal to end his family’s 40-year grip on power, some tentative hope of a solution remained, Brahimi said in his first briefing to the council since he took over from Kofi Annan on Sept. 1 as the U.N.-Arab League special representative for Syria.

“I think there is no disagreement anywhere that the situation in Syria is extremely bad and getting worse,that it is a threat to the region and a threat to peace and security in the world,” Brahimi told reporters after the private talks.

Activists claim nearly 30,000 people have died in the uprising that began in March 2011, including in attacks Monday by Syrian warplanes in the northern city of Aleppo.

Brahimi had just returned from Syria and refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey. His gloomy report of a looming food crisis, battle-damaged schools and shuttered factories contradicted his insistence that he saw grounds for optimism, including “some signs” that the divided Syrian opposition may be moving toward unity. That is key for any political negotiations Brahimi would oversee.

“I refuse to believe that reasonable people do not see that you cannot go backward, that you cannot go back to the Syria of the past. I told everybody in Damascus and everywhere that reform is not enough anymore, what is needed is change,” said Brahimi, who has met with Assad and other regime officials in Damascus.

“Paradoxically, now that I have found out a little more about what is happening in the country and the region, I think that we will find an opening in the not too distant future,” Brahimi said.

Brahimi said he wanted to hold further discussions before disclosing precisely what action he plans to propose. “I do not have a full plan for the moment, but I do have a few ideas,” he said.

According to a diplomat inside the council’s private briefing, who demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly to reveal details, Brahimi was also reluctant to discuss the proposals with the Security Council. “He kept his cards very close to his chest,” he said.

In the private talks, Brahimi urged Security Council members to overcome the diplomatic deadlock which has paralyzed their ability to help end the crisis.

The Security Council is the only U.N. body that can impose global sanctions and authorize military action. Russia, Syria’s key protector, and China have vetoed three Western-backed resolutions aimed at pressuring Assad to halt the violence and open talks with his opponents on a transition of power.

“If I do not represent the entire council, I am nothing. I need to be seen to represent a united council and a united League of Arab States,” Brahimi told reporters.

Brahimi told the council that he believed Assad’s goal was to return the country to “the old Syria,” in which he and his father had ruled as dictators for four decades, the diplomat said.

The envoy told the meeting that food shortages are likely in Syria because of a poor harvest and citizens fear seeking hospital treatment when injured. Brahimi said about 2,000 schools had been damaged and others used as shelter by those who had lost their homes. Many factories and pharmaceutical laboratories were destroyed or falling into disrepair, according to the diplomat.

The U.N.’s World Food Program warned that it is running short of funds to cover operations in Syria because of sharply growing needs. Program chief Ertharin Cousin said the agency had raised $78 million, but needs $60 million more to cover its annual Syria budget. The crisis is likely to worsen as Syria’s wet, chilly winter rolls in, she said.

The number of Syrians in need of food aid has jumped from 250,000 in April to 1.5 million today, Cousin said.

Despite a call from German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle to maintain backing for Annan’s six-point peace plan, which starts with a cease-fire and ends with a political transition, Brahimi said only that the ideas would remain “elements in my toolbox.”

Annan’s plan never took hold and was largely ignored by the government and the rebels before it ultimately collapsed.

On Monday, Syrian warplanes bombed two buildings in Aleppo’s southern neighborhood of Maadi, killing five people, including three children from the same family, activists said. The apartment buildings were destroyed and more people were feared buried under the rubble, activists said. An amateur video showed people digging through the debris in search of survivors.

Across Syria, at least 48 civilians and 22 regime soldiers were killed Monday, including 16 in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain based activist group.

The Observatory and another group, the Local Coordination Committees, reported violence elsewhere in the country, including attacks by government troops backed by helicopter gunships on the southern town of Sheikh Miskeen in Daraa province.

The Observatory said rebels and troops were fighting near the military air base of Tabaqah in the northern province of Raqqa. Last week, rebels captured a major border crossing with Turkey in Raqqa.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, said that Iran is neutral in the Syrian civil war, and denied allegations that Tehran is providing weapons or training to Assad’s regime.

“We like and love both sides, and we see both sides as brothers,” he said. He referred to the conflict in Syria as “tribal” fighting and said that international “meddling from the outside has made the situation even harder.” He refused to say whether Iran would accept a government not led by the Assad regime, which for years has been Iran’s closest ally in the Middle East.

Ahmadinejad also alluded to the amateur anti-Islam video made in the U.S., accusing the United States and others of misusing freedom of speech and failing to speak out against the defamation of people’s beliefs and “divine prophets.”

Ahmadinejad said Monday that Israelis had no historical roots in the Middle East and that the existence of Israel was just a passing phase in the region’s long history.

In a meeting with Iranian expatriates in New York on Sunday evening, Ahmadinejad belittled Israel’s significance and the military threats Israel has made against his country over its disputed nuclear program.

“A number of uncultured Zionists that threaten the Iranian nation today are never counted and are never paid any attention in the equations of the Iranian nation,” Ahmadinejad said, according to a summary of his remarks on his English-language website.

Secretary-General Ban Kimoon, who has repeatedly admonished Iranian leaders against making anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks, had a conversation with Ahmadinejad on Sunday to reiterate the warning that such language could cause “potentially harmful consequences,” Ban’s press office said in a statement.

Without mentioning any country by name, he lashed out at the United States for ignoring Israel’s nuclear arsenal while trying to shut down Iran’s nuclear program.

“Some members of the Security Council with veto rights have chosen silence with regard to the nuclear warheads of a fake regime, while at the same time they impede the scientific progress of other nations,” he said.

Information for this article was contributed by David Stringer, Ron DePasquale, Edith M. Lederer, Karin Laub, Diaa Hadid, Albert Aji and John Daniszewski of The Associated Press; and by Rick Gladstone and Neil MacFarquahar of The New York Times.