Russia defends the sale of arms to Syrian regime

BEIRUT - Russia defended its sales of anti-aircraft systems to the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, just days after joining forces with the U.S. for a new push to end Syria’s civil war through negotiations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov avoided saying whether those sales included advanced S-300 batteries. Israel has asked Russia to cancel what it said was the imminent sale of the S-300 missiles, portrayed by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as destabilizing to Israel’s security.

The S-300s would make it harder for the U.S. and other countries to even consider intervening militarily or enforcing a no-fly zone in Syria. The U.S. has urged Russia - an Assad ally along with China, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia - to cut off weapons supplies to Syria.

Despite such disagreements, Russia and the U.S. decided this week to convene an international conference to bring representatives of the Assad regime and the opposition to the negotiating table. Such talks would aim at setting up a transitional government. No date has been set.

The regime and the Syrian opposition have welcomed the idea, but with conditions. The opposition says talks can begin only when Assad and his aides have left. The regime says it will keep fighting the rebels, without saying at which stage it would be willing to halt its fire.

The civil war, which began as a popular uprising against Assad in March 2011, has killed tens of thousands of Syrians and displaced several million. The two sides are deadlocked, though the regime has scored recent military gains.

On Friday, the U.N. commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, raised alarm over the western rebel-held town of Qusair, close to Lebanon, which has been besieged by Syrian troops for several weeks.

Pillay said her team reported a major troop buildup in the area and noted that an increasing number of residents were being displaced. The commissioner said she fears atrocities if Qusair is overrun.

Pillay called Friday for greater urgency in efforts to end the conflict in Syria, saying massacres carried out in recent days should spur international action.

”The increasingly brutal nature of the conflict makes international efforts to halt the bloodshed imperative,” Pillay said in a statement in Geneva. Efforts by the United States and Russia to convene an international conference on ending the two-year civil war announced this week were welcome, Pillay said, “but we need a much greater sense of urgency.”

The Syrian military dropped leaflets over Qusair urging rebel fighters to surrender but did not set a deadline for them to do so, according to the office of the Homs governor.

Rebels have lost ground in the area since a Hezbollah-backed government offensive there last month.

Bassam al-Dada, an official in the rebels’ Free Syrian Army, said Friday that more pro-regime forces have been streaming to Qusair, a town of more than 20,000 people south of the city of Homs.

Hezbollah fighters have shelled the town, hitting the main water tank and filtration station, and rebel fighters have responded, al-Dada said by phone from Turkey.

Qusair is important to the regime because the area links the capital of Damascus with the coastal region, where regime loyalists are concentrated. This includes Alawites, followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which the Assad family also belongs. The rebellion against Assad is largely driven by Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims.

By holding Qusair, rebels have been impeding the regime’s military movement and supply chain, said Bilal Saab, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, North America. He said he believes the regime is trying to regain as much ground as possible before any negotiations with the opposition on a transition.

Previous attempts to resolve the conflict peacefullyhave run aground, but Saab said this initiative might have a better chance because both Russia and the U.S. are pushing for it.

The plan, similar to one set out last year in Geneva, calls for talks on a transition government and an open-ended cease-fire.

British Prime Minister David Cameron said after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday that the two agreed leaders that “we must help drive this process.”

Cameron said Russia, America, Britain and other countries should participate in setting up a transitional government. Putin added that “we have a common interest in the cessation of violence as soon as possible.”

At the same time, Russia is going ahead with arms sales, the Russian foreign minister said, portraying the weapons as defensive.

“Russia has been selling for a long time, has signed contracts and is completing deliveries of technology that consists of anti-aircraft systems,” Lavrov said Friday in Warsaw.

Existing contracts are not believed to include the S-300.The S-300 batteries can target manned planes, drones and incoming missiles, and would be a state-of-the-art upgrade of Syria’s aging Soviet-supplied defense system.

Pillay, the U.N. commissioner for human rights, on Friday drew attention to images of piles of bodies, including infants and small children, that purport to show the killing of dozens of civilians by pro-government militia in the village of Bayda and elsewhere in the Baniyas area this month. She said she believed war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed.

Pillay’s statement reflected concern that the international response to reports of the Bayda massacre showed that international outrage is draining away under the relentless barrage of horror stories in more than two years of brutal conflict.

”There needs to be a careful investigation of each and every incident like this,” Pillay said of the latest massacre reports. “We should not reach the point in this conflict where people become numb to the atrocious killing of civilians.”

U.N. investigators were receiving consistent testimony that government forces are deliberately targeting hospitals, pharmacies, bakeries, schools and other sources of life-sustaining support andare shelling and rocketing civilian areas regardless of whether they had a minimal or heavy rebel presence, she said.

”But the disgraceful disregard for the protection of civilians is not restricted to the government side. The scope of violations by anti-government armed groups has also increased alarmingly,” she added.

Opposition attacks in Damascus had killed and injured dozens of civilians, she said, and abductions by the Islamist Nusra Front appeared to be increasing. She expressed particular concern at reports that some rebel fighters are forcing women into marriage. Information for this article was contributed by Karin Laub, Monika Scislowska and Jim Heintz of The Associated Press and by Nick Cumming-Bruce of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 10 on 05/11/2013

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