Chinese envoy to press Syria for cease-fire

Syrian state television aired footage of residents returning to the battered Homs district of Baba Amro on Tuesday while the Red Cross said it was still unable to deliver aid to the neighborhood.    

Footage showed dozens of men, women and children walking through grubby streets, passing pock-marked and semi-destroyed buildings.    

Baba Amro was shelled by Syrian forces for almost a month in February before rebels who are fighting President Bashar al-Assad's government fled the area last week.    

State television showed pictures of rocket-propelled grenades and guns laid out on the street - weapons the presenter said belonged to "armed terrorists".

Small remote-controlled planes and helicopters were also shown.  

"This is the tunnel used by the terrorists to get weapons in and out," the presenter said, standing in a school building next to a 2-metre hole in the ground.    

Syrian authorities were still preventing the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from entering Baba Amro to distribute badly needed aid.    

"We are still not in Baba Amro," said Saleh Dabbakeh, the Damascus-based spokesman for the ICRC.

"I would not be surprised if residents are returning. What I am hearing from our teams is that it is much quieter than before in the entire Homs city."

The United Nations says more than 7,500 civilians have died in Syria's crackdown on protests against Assad's government.  

On the other hand Iraqi families fleeing the escalating violence in Syria were arriving in Baghdad on Tuesday.  

Families, some of whom have been living in neighboring Syria for more than eight years, traveled by bus to the Iraqi capital. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled to Syria following the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.  

One woman said: "I was in Syria for nine years. I bought a house there. But because of the difficult circumstances there, I decided to come back home. What shall I do?"  

But the returnees face a difficult time in their homeland, with officials saying that more than 1.3 million Iraqis remain homeless after being forced to flee six years ago during widespread sectarian violence that threatened their lives.  

United Nations diplomat Claire Bourgeois voiced concerns on  Sunday that Iraq had not taken enough steps to help the homeless, and that squatters should be helped into permanent homes instead of evicted from empty buildings or public places where they are living.  

Bourgeois also said many of the homeless had lost identification and other documents that would entitle them to government assistance. 
China's special envoy is to press Syrian authorities for a cease-fire to halt the country's bloodshed even as Beijing remains firmly opposed to any foreign intervention in the Mideast nation.
 
     
Li Huaqing, China's former ambassador to Syria, is to meet government officials during a two-day visit, starting Tuesday. However, he is not expected to meet rebels seeking to overthrow authoritarian President Bashar Assad.
 
     
China has remained a key Syrian ally throughout the 11-month uprising seeking Assad's ouster. As international outrage over Assad's deadly crackdown on dissent has grown, China and Russia have protected Syria from condemnation by the U.N. Security Council.
 
     
Both countries fear such a step could lead to military intervention against Assad as it did last year against Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.