Violent Crackdown Leaves More Deaths As Egypt Hosts Regional Meeting On Syria Crisis

Officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran met in Cairo late Monday to discuss the Syrian crisis, but analysts said the regional powers were unlikely to agree on any tangible steps, as more deaths were reported in the violent crackdown across Syria.

As many as 130 people have been killed by the fire of Syrian forces across the country on Monday, activists told Al Arabiya. Meanwhile, Syrian rebels announced the formation of a revolutionary military council in Aleppo that includes all the Free Syrian Army battalions.

Syrian rebels, meanwhile, summarily executed at least 20 soldiers in second city Aleppo, a watchdog said Monday, as U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi admitted he faced a “very difficult” task in his bid to end the nearly 18-month conflict.

Iran is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is fighting an uprising against his rule, while the three other countries have all called for him to quit power.

Tehran accuses regional states like Saudi Arabia and Turkey of assisting Syrian rebels fighting to topple Assad.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr said the meeting of the quartet, under an initiative proposed by Egypt, would gather senior Foreign Ministry officials from the four nations to prepare for higher-ranking talks, according to Reuters.

He told reporters a meeting of foreign ministers would take place in Cairo in the “coming days,” but did not give a date.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry said Cairo would seek agreement on several points, including stopping violence, ensuring Syria’s territorial unity, rejecting any foreign military intervention and launching a political process to achieve the Syrian people’s “aspirations for democracy, freedom and dignity.”

Analysts have said they see little chance of substantive agreement between the states.

The Official Iranian news agency IRNA reported that Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has suggested adding two countries to the Syria quartet. He named Iraq as one of the countries, but he did not specify the other country.

The Syrian government’s traditional ally Moscow called for a peace conference involving all parties to the conflict, warning of the risks of a complete collapse of central authority as happened in Somalia in the early 1990s.

“I know perfectly well that the mission is very difficult but I had no right to refuse to try to help the Syrian people,” Brahimi told reporters in Cairo on his first visit to the region since taking up his post earlier this month.

“I am at the service of the Syrian people alone. My only boss is the Syrian people. The only interest of the United Nations and the Arab League is the Syrian people,” the envoy said.

The soldiers executed on Monday were captured at a military compound during a rebel attack in the Hanano district of east Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

They had their eyes blindfolded and hands tied behind their backs before they were lined up and shot, sometime over the weekend, Observatory director Rami Abdul Rahman told AFP.

Amateur video posted on YouTube and distributed by the Observatory showed some 20 bodies laid out next to each other on a pavement. Many of the men’s heads were covered in blood, and some were wearing jeans rather than full military attire.

One of the rebels standing next to the bodies held up his hand to make a victory sign. “Allahu Akbar!” (God is greatest), cried another, as a third shouted out at the bodies: “You dogs! You low lives!”

Reports of the executions came as Syrian MiG warplanes blitzed areas of Aleppo, dropping two bombs at a time and then opening up with machinegun fire, an AFP correspondent reported.

Helicopter gunships also flew over the city causing panic on the streets as residents fled for safety, the correspondent reported.

The Observatory said at least five people died in morning bombing raids on the Marjeh, Sakhur, Hanano, Tariq al-Bab and Sheikh Khodr neighborhoods of Aleppo, among a total of 95 civilians killed nationwide, 63 of them civilians.

Moscow, which has been increasingly critical of the West for its championing of the Syrian opposition, said it was time for a comprehensive peace agreement similar to that which ended the civil war in neighboring Lebanon.

“We are proposing to our Western partners the organization of a ‘Taif conference’ between all the players of the conflict,” Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said alluding to a 1989 peace deal signed in the Saudi city between the parties to the Lebanese civil war.

“This conference should bring together opposition and regime figures, as well as Christian, Alawite and Druze community members,” Bogdanov added, referring to Syria’s minority communities, including the dominant Alawite elite of President Bashar al-Assad.

“Given the opposition divisions and the weapons reaching the rebels, the risk of a Somalia-ization of Syria is real, if the regime were to suddenly collapse tomorrow. We must do all we can to avoid this disintegration of a centralized state,” he told France’s Le Figaro newspaper in an article to appear Wednesday.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon called for all war criminals in Syria to be brought to justice, as his human rights chief urged a probe into the slaughter late last month of hundreds of people in the Damascus suburb of Daraya.

Alarabiya