SANA reported on Thursday that “the Syrian forces have liberated
the al-Ikhbariya news team that was kidnapped 7 days ago in al-Tal area”.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported
that 161 people were killed on Wednesday in airstrike launched by a Syrian
fighter jet on Aazaz.
Also on Thursday, Russia told the United States that it favours a continued United Nations presence in Syria, saying a U.N. exit from the Middle Eastern nation would have "serious negative consequences".
In a meeting with U.S. Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov emphasised "the need to maintain the U.N. presence in Syria," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The United States has said unarmed U.N. observers should not remain in Syria beyond an Aug. 19 deadline, but that Washington is willing to consider an alternative U.N. presence in the country to deal with the deadly 17-month conflict.
Meanwhile, China's foreign minister urged a visiting Syrian government envoy on Thursday to start talks with the opposition at an early date, but said Damascus should also take steps to meet the people's demands for change.
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told Envoy Bouthaina Shaaban that China was also "extremely worried" by the situation in her country, the ministry said in a statement on its website.
UN Security Council
The U.N. Security Council will
not renew the mandate of a U.N. observer mission in Syria, which is due to
expire in the coming days, and will begin its withdrawal from the country,
French U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud said on Thursday.
"The mandate of UNSMIS is over on the 19th of August ...
UNSMIS will fade out," said Araud, who is the president of the Security
Council for the month of August. He said conditions for renewing the mandate
had not been met.
Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin
said the permanent five Security Council members - Russia, China, the United
States, France and Britain - and key regional players would meet on Syria in
New York on Friday. He added that he regretted that the U.N. observer mission
will end.
Separately, a Syrian government
envoy praised China and Russia on their stance towards the bloody conflict
engulfing her country in an interview published on Thursday during a visit to
Beijing that she said would give officials a "real picture" of the
crisis.
Envoy Bouthaina Shaaban's interview with
the state-run China Daily was the first public comment from her trip to
Beijing, where she arrived on Tuesday, and she sought to cast China as a
steadfast friend of President Bashar al-Assad's government, which is beset by a
civil war with opposition forces.
The Mecca Summit:
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria's
membership early on Thursday at a summit of Muslim leaders in Mecca, citing
President Bashar al-Assad's violent suppression of the Syrian revolt.
"The conference
decides to suspend the Syrian Arab Republic membership in the OIC and all its
subsidiary organs, specialized and affiliated institutions," the closing
statement said.
The move had been
approved on Monday at a preliminary meeting of OIC foreign ministers and was
agreed on the summit's second night despite opposition from Iran.
Saudi Arabia, the
summit's host, has led Arab efforts to isolate Syria diplomatically and has
backed calls for the Syrian rebel opposition to be armed, which Foreign
Minister Saud al-Fasial described in February as "an excellent idea."
However, speaking
to reporters after the summit, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said
he "did not see much support for external military intervention" in
Syria during the summit.
He described the
decision to suspend Syrian membership as "a message to the international
community ... that the Islamic community stands with a politically peaceful
solution and does not want any more bloodshed."
However, Saudi King Abdullah tried to
conciliate Iran at the summit opening by placing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
at his side to welcome Muslim leaders in a gesture Saudi political analysts
said was aimed at putting old grievances aside in the quest for a resolution to
the Syrian crisis.
He also suggested
founding a center for dialogue between Islam's sects, another move aimed at
defusing some of the region's sectarian tensions. That proposal was adopted by
the summit.
In his first
published comments since the summit opened, Ahmadinejad appeared to rebuff the
Saudi move.
REUTERS/LBCI/AP