UN, Arab League may act on Syria horror

smh.com.au -- AS THE citizens of the besieged Syrian city of Homs intensified their calls for help from the international community, the United Nations has flagged the possibility of a joint UN-Arab League mission to Syria.

The announcement from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came at the end of another bloody day in Homs, in which local reports indicate about 50 people died in the intensifying bombardment from Syrian government forces. Homs residents reported online - via email and Twitter - that shelling had begun again last night in attacks that Mr Ban described as a ''grim harbinger of worse to come''.

A senior US State Department official told Britain's Daily Telegraph that the international community may be forced to ''militarise'' the crisis unless President Bashar al-Assad stops the onslaught. The official said that while the White House wanted to exhaust all its diplomatic options, the debate in Washington had shifted away from diplomacy and towards more robust action.
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The Pentagon's Central Command has begun a preliminary internal review of US military capabilities in the region, the Telegraph reported, which one senior official called a ''scoping exercise'' that would provide options for President Barack Obama if and when they were requested.

There is a deepening humanitarian crisis across Syria, with the Local Co-ordination Committees in the country reporting hundreds of people displaced and a complete power and telecommunications blackout in some Damascus suburbs.

There is also a critical shortage of food, including infant formula and milk, and water supplies in Rankous have been cut, the committees said.

''For too many months we have watched this crisis deepen,'' Mr Ban said. ''We have seen escalating violence, brutal crackdowns and tremendous suffering by the Syrian people.''

He described as ''deeply regrettable'' the United Nations Security Council's failure to agree on collective action regarding Syria, referring to Russia and China's veto of a draft resolution supported by the council's 13 other members.

''It has encouraged the Syrian government to step up its war on its own people. Thousands have been killed in cold blood.''

After withdrawing its observer mission from Syria late last month, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, announced he would send the mission back into Syria, and suggested the UN consider a joint observer mission, Mr Ban said. The move comes as Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was due to arrive in Washington for talks with his US counterpart, Hillary Clinton, to explore Turkey's plans to launch its own initiative to resolve the crisis.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, said accounts from local sources, as well as independent media reports from inside Homs, suggested the Syrian army had sharply increased the use of tanks, helicopters, mortars, rockets and artillery fire to attack civilian areas.

The UN said in December - when the death toll from the government crackdown on the uprising had reached 5400 - that it could no longer verify how many had been killed, although local reports put the figure at well above 7000.

The aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres released witness testimony yesterday chronicling a disturbing pattern of abuse and torture of patients seeking treatment at hospitals, which are now either overwhelmed with demand or inaccessible.

Ms Pillay said the Security Council should refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court.

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