Syria on brink of sectarian civil war, West says

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported Friday that clashes continue in Daraa, south Syria between pro-regime forces and dissident groups.

Heavy arm gun fire and explosions were heard in the city of Douma at dawn as pro-regime forces tried to enter the city, the observatory added. Rebels later announced that pro-regime forces had executed 12 Syrian workers on a checkpoint in Reef Al-Kaseer, Homs.

The rebels called for anti-government protests today under the banner: “The Children of Houla are the beacons of victory” this as Syrian state television also called for prayers for the victims of the Houla massacre.

Meanwhile, western nations reported on Thursday that Syria is nearing full-blown sectarian civil war that would be catastrophic for the entire Middle East, urging Russia to end its support for President Bashar al-Assad and put pressure on him to stop the bloodshed.     

With anti-Assad rebels urging international envoy Kofi Annan to declare his peace plan dead, freeing them from any commitment to the tattered truce, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the prospect of spiraling violence presented.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Syria was moving towards "all-out civil war or a state of collapse".

The European Union was drafting new sanctions against Syria, he added, calling on other nations to pressure Assad.   

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that another massacre like Friday's killing of 108 men, women and children in the western Houla region could pitch Syria into a devastating civil war "from which the country would never recover".   

Washington's U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, said Syria's version of what had happened in Houla was "another blatant lie". The massacre led a range of Western countries to expel senior Syrian diplomats and to press Russia and China to allow tougher action by the U.N. Security Council.   

Syria's main rebel commander, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, urged Annan to declare that his peace plan had failed.   

Annan's spokesman said it was not for the peace envoy to declare defeat.  
  
China said it still had faith in the Annan plan, despite the "pain and sadness over what happened in Houla".    

As countries lined up at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council to express their horror about the Houla massacre, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights appealed for support for the six-point plan to halt the violence in Syria. "Otherwise, the situation in Syria might descend into a full-fledged conflict and the future of the country, as well as the region as a whole could be in grave danger," Navi Pillay told the 47-nation council in a speech read out on her behalf.   

It was the fifth time that the Geneva-based council called an urgent meeting on Syria, something the country's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Fayssal al-Hamwi, said was a sign that some countries are trying to divide his country.                    

Al-Hamwi, too, condemned the massacre in Houla but blamed it on "groups of armed terrorists" seeking to ignite sectarian strife.     

U.S. Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe said there was no doubt that the regime of President Bashar Assad was responsible for the killing.    

A draft resolution proposed by Qatar, Turkey and the United States condemns the killings in Houla and states that "those responsible for serious violations of human rights must be held accountable," but doesn't suggest how.    

European diplomats want the resolution to include a call for the U.N. Security Council in New York to consider referring the massacre to the International Criminal Court. This is something the rights council cannot do on its own.    

And since Syria isn't a member of the ICC, under international law only the Security Council can refer it to the Hague-based tribunal. Human rights groups backed the EU position.  "At this stage what we need is a strong resolution requesting ICC referral," said Juliette de Rivero, a spokeswoman for the group Human Rights Watch.  

Other nations including the United States have been skeptical about invoking the International Criminal Court.    

But Donahoe indicated that information collected by the rights council's investigators could be used for an ICC probe.    

The draft resolution also calls on Syria to allow the rights council's panel of experts to visit the country, something it has previously rejected.    

The head of the panel, Brazilian professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro told Brazil's O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper on Thursday that "Houla is a warning of how a civil war would be." 

AP/REUTERS