Baba Amro sees heavy fighting, US drafts outline of new UN Syria resolution

Heavy fighting broke out on Wednesday near the main rebel stronghold of Baba Amro in the city of Homs when Syrian troops began a ground assault, opposition sources said.

"The army is trying to go in with infantry from the direction of al-Bassel football field and fierce confrontations with automatic rifles and heavy machineguns are taking place there," activist Mohammad al-Homsi told Reuters from Homs.

He said the military had shelled the area heavily on Tuesday and overnight before the ground attack started.

On another note, the United States has drafted an outline for a new U.N. Security Council resolution demanding access for humanitarian aid workers in besieged Syrian towns and an end to the violence there, Western envoys said on Tuesday.    

By focusing on the humanitarian situation, U.N. envoys said, Western and Arab powers hoped to make it difficult for Moscow and Beijing to veto council action on Damascus a third time. Russian and Chinese backing for any council resolution, they added, would be a blow to Syrian President Bashar Assad.    

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday that the council was working on a third resolution, this time focusing on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Assad's military operations against protesters that the United Nations says have killed over 7,500 civilians.   

"There is a text, though it's not a formal draft resolution yet," a Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "It's been drafted by the Americans. It hasn't gone to the full council, just to a small circle of like-minded countries."    

Asked when the draft would be ready for a vote in the full council, he added: "I have no idea about the timeline."    

Other diplomats confirmed his remarks, saying that the idea for such a resolution came out of last week's "Friends of Syria" meeting in Tunis.    

In addition to calling for an end to the violence and demanding that humanitarian aid workers get access to besieged towns like Homs and Hama, the resolution would suggest that the government's clampdown is the cause of the crisis, envoys said.    

When asked about the idea of a new draft Security Council resolution, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters: "I think that we need to focus on those actions which have the greatest chance of success."    

A Western envoy said a humanitarian resolution was exactly the kind of text the entire council "could rally around."       

 Russia, U.N. diplomats said, has indicated that it would support a resolution that focuses exclusively on the humanitarian crisis without any mention of the political situation. Arab and Western diplomats, however, say that such a resolution would be unacceptable to them.    

The new U.S initiative, they said, could succeed since the Chinese have signaled that they might not want to keep vetoing Syria resolutions in the council.

Reuters