Syria on brink of sectarian civil war, West says

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Peace envoy Kofi Annan said on Friday he was "frustrated and impatient" a week after the massacre in Syria of 108 people, mostly children, shocked the world, while there were signs Russia might be moving closer to the West on how to tackle the crisis.

President Vladimir Putin denied that Russia, which has a base in Syria and supplies it with weapons, was supplying arms to the Syrian government to crush rebels, brushing off U.S. criticism of a "reprehensible" arms shipment to Damascus.

Putin, speaking after talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ahead of talks with French President Francois Holland, reiterated that Moscow does not back any side in what he called an "extremely dangerous" situation in Syria and said patience was needed to achieve a political solution.

World powers are pressing for a peaceful resolution in Syria, where more than 10,000 people have been killed in a 15-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, to prevent the country sliding into an all-out civil war that could also trigger regional conflict.

"I think perhaps I am more frustrated than most of you because I am in the thick of this," Annan told reporters after talks in Beirut with Lebanon's Prime Minister Najib Mikati. "I want to see things move faster," he said.

Syrian rebels, who agreed to Annan's April 12 ceasefire plan, have been urging him to declare the plan dead, freeing them from any commitment to a tattered truce which both rebels and government forces have repeatedly violated.

Damascus says it wants Annan's plan to succeed in ending the violence so the crisis can be resolved through political talks.

Although refusing to declare the ceasefire a failure, Annan welcomed any further steps from the U.N. Security Council. "If there are other options on the table, I will say bravo and support them," he said.

OUTRAGE OVER HOULA

Outrage at last Friday's mass killings in the Syrian town of Houla, documented by U.N. monitors, prompted a host of Western countries to step up pressure on Syria by expelling its senior diplomats, and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.

But China and Russia have stuck to their rejection of any intervention or U.N.-backed penalties to force Assad to change course, while backing Annan's peace drive, the only broadly accepted initiative to halt the bloodletting in Syria.

Merkel and Hollande are expected to try to convince Putin that the West is not working against Russia's strategic interests in the Middle East and that the intention is to halt the bloodshed that has erupted across the country.

The West is averse to military intervention, although Hollande said that could change if the U.N. Security Council backed it - something that is not possible unless veto-wielding members Russia and China allow it.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Council Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe said her hope was that Russia was "on the cusp of joining with us to use the leverage we have together to make sure that this conflict does not spiral out of control."

In negotiations over the text of a U.N. resolution on the Houla massacre, she said the Russians were "very interested, more than ever in the past, to coming to an agreement".

"They weren't quite there, but I think they've signaled enough of an interest to move, at least in our negotiations, that there is still that possibility with the conversations ahead of us that they will be helping, trying to use their leverage to bring this to an end," she said.

Donahoe said Secretary Hillary Clinton would meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this weekend.

Clinton, speaking in Oslo on Friday, said Russia was seen in Damascus and at the United Nations as supporting the continuity of Assad's rule. But she said the United States was prepared to cooperate with Russia if Moscow is ready to work on a political transition in Syria.

"We have a good, long-standing relationship with Syria, but we do not support any side from which the threat of a civil war may emerge," Putin said. Russia, along with China, has vetoed two moves in the U.N. Security Council to condemn Assad, but supported the Annan initiative.

"I agree with Madame Chancellor (Merkel) that our common task is to prevent the situation from developing under such an unfavorable scenario. Today we are seeing the signs of an emerging civil war. It is extremely dangerous," he added.

"As for supplying weapons, Russia does not provide weapons that could be used in a civil conflict," he said.

The Kremlin does not want to lose its firmest foothold in the Middle East - a client for billions of dollars' worth of weapons and the host of Russia's only warm-water naval port outside the former Soviet Union.

GUNFIRE AND CLASHES

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group, said that at least 20 people were killed in gunfire and clashes in Syria on Friday. The Observatory added that hundreds of thousands of civilians attended opposition protests around the country.

A day before, 12 workers were killed near Syria's western town of al-Qusair when gunmen loyal to Assad ordered them off a bus and shot them, activists said. Syrian media blamed "terrorists" for the killings.

Video released by activists showed bloodied corpses of 12 men - two of them with the top of their heads shot away - laid out on the ground near the town of al-Qusair, which like Houla lies about 20km from the opposition stronghold of Homs city. Qusair is southwest of Homs, near the Lebanese border.

Hamza Al-Buweida, a local opposition activist, said he spoke to a survivor who said the dead men had been returning from work at a fertilizer company in al-Buweida al-Sharqiya.

"They stopped, as usual, at a Syrian army checkpoint. But about 300 meters after the checkpoint a yellow car with four armed shabbiha (pro-Assad militia) stopped their car," he told Reuters over Skype.

"They took money off the men and then killed them one by one with gunshots to the head. More than 300 bullets were found in the bodies," he said.

It was impossible to verify Buweida's account of the killing. Syria has restricted journalists' access since the start of the uprising against Assad 15 months ago.

Activists say 50 to 100 people have died daily this week, including civilians, soldiers and anti-Assad rebels.

Syrian forces and pro-government militia accused of committing a massacre in Houla could face prosecution for crimes against humanity, the United Nations said on Friday and rights experts said Syrian authorities had directly ordered torture.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called again for the Security Council to refer Syria to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Pillay, a former war crimes judge, said: "I reiterate that those who order, assist or fail to stop attacks on civilians are individually criminally liable for their actions."

Former President Bill Clinton believes the worsening situation in Syria is similar in some respects to one he faced early on in the Bosnia crisis in the 1990s, and said a way must be found to stop the violence.

Clinton said he believes the world "would come rushing to help Syria" if Assad left but said it was "very difficult" for the United States to act alone. European countries had to first be "persuaded to support our position."

(Additional reporting by Tom Miles in Geneva, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Gleb Bryanski and Andreas Rinke in Berlin; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Jon Hemming)

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