Russia seeks peace as Syria bleeds

FM wins Assads promise

Russia won a promise from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday to bring an end to bloodshed in Syria, but Western and Arab states acted to isolate Assad further after activists and rebels said his forces killed over 100 in the city of Homs.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, representing a rare ally on a trip to the Syrian capital other states are shunning, said Assad was keen to resolve Syria’s crisis in line with an Arab plan Moscow and Beijing vetoed in the UN Security Council.

The Russian mediation failed to slow a rush by countries that denounced the Russian-Chinese veto three days ago to corner Syria diplomatically and cripple Assad with sanctions in hopes of toppling him and encouraging reforms to avert chaos in a region straddling major fault lines of Middle East conflict.

Over 300 lives lost

Opposition activists said that government forces renewed shelling of the central city of Homs on Tuesday just before Lavrov’s arrival, killing some 19 people in an onslaught that they say has claimed over 300 lives in the last five days.

Syria says the city — a hub of 11 months of protest against Assad's rule, parts of which are held by insurgents including army defectors — is the site of a running battle with “terrorists” directed and funded from abroad.

Its references to foreign interference are widely read to include Gulf Arab states, which followed the lead of Washington and European Union countries on Tuesday in drawing down their diplomatic presence in Damascus.

Assurance

“The president of Syria assured us he was ‘completely committed to the task of stopping violence regardless of where it may come from’,” Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying after his meeting with Assad, accompanied by Russia’s top spy.

Lavrov, whose government wields unique leverage as a major arms supplier with long-standing political ties to Damascus, told Assad it was in Russia’s interest for “Arab peoples to live in peace and agreement”, the RIA news agency said.

Lavrov said Assad assured him he was committed to halting bloodshed by both sides and that he was ready to seek dialogue with all political groups in Syria.

Opposition activists have dismissed similar pledges made by Assad in the past because he continued trying to crush protests with tanks and troops and branded his foes as “terrorists”.