The head of Russia's state arms trader says Moscow will continue shipping weapons to the government in Syria despite the country's escalating civil war.
Anatoly Isaikin, the director of Rosoboronexport, says arms trade with Syria isn't prohibited by the United Nations and so Russia has no intention to stop.
Isaikin told a Wednesday news conference that Russia is sending Syria defensive weapons, mostly air-defense systems, but nothing that could be used offensively such as planes, helicopters or armored vehicles.
Moscow has been a main protector of Syrian President Bashar Assad's beleaguered regime, shielding it from attempts to impose U.N. sanctions over his crackdown on a 23-month-old uprising in which more than 60,000 have died.
Isaikin said more deliveries will be conducted under existing contracts, but gave no specifics.
Meanwhile,
Qatar has handed the Syrian embassy building in
Doha to the National Coalition, Syria's main opposition group, a statement said on Wednesday.
"Qatar has decided to hand over the Syrian embassy building in Doha to Mr Nizar al-Haraki after his appointment as ambassador to Doha for the National Coalition," the Coalition statement said.
"Qatar has acted faster than the Friends of Syria
coalition," the opposition statement said, in reference to a string of
Western and Arab states, along with Turkey, which support the revolt
against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"The flag of the revolution will be raised above the building," the Syrian National Coalition added.
Speaking to AFP by phone, Haraki said the Qatari authorities had accepted his appointment.
"A formal decision has been made to accept my appointment as ambassador," he said.
On the Field:
Syrian forces bombarded the southeast of Damascus with air strikes and
artillery on Wednesday to try and dislodge rebel fighters who have
gained a foothold in the Syrian capital, opposition activists said.
A Middle East diplomat following the military situation described
battles in and around Damascus as a "major engagement", with fighting
going back and forth between the two sides.
Jets bombed Jobar, a neighbourhood adjacent to the main Abbasid Square,
and the suburb of Daraya on the highway to Jordan to the south, sources
in the capital said.
The two areas are part of interconnected Sunni Muslim districts in and
around Damascus that have been at the forefront of the 22-month uprising
against four decades of family rule by Assad and his father.
Rebels entered Jobar last week after breaching the army's defence lines
at the ring road and overrunning several army and pro-Assad militia
positions in the district.
The road, a supply line for elite army units dug in in the centre of the
city, separates the capital from the mostly rebel-held expanse of Sunni
towns and suburbs known as eastern Ghouta.
To the southwest, near the main highway to Jordan, heavy bombardment was
reported on the suburb of Daraya, where the army advanced in the last
few days, breaking a two-month rebel hold.
The rebels remain entrenched in the south of the district near the main
highway leading to Jordan, said Abu Hamza, a member of the Daraya Local
Council, which has been administering the suburb since it was taken over
by the opposition.
Daraya is part of Muaddamiya, a heavily populated working class Sunni
Muslim district, one of multiple Sunni neighbourhoods on the edge of the
capital that have been at the forefront of the 22-month uprising.
Republican Guards and the Fourth Division, under the command of Assad's
feared brother Maher, have been shelling Sunni areas of the capital and
suburbs from the Qasioun Mountain in the centre of the city and
surrounding hills and also from the Mezze Military airport located near
the highway to Beirut to the west.
The rebel strategy appears to target cutting the troops' supply lines,
which pass through the ring road and the suburb of Adra to the north
east.
The army and a plethora of security forces remain entrenched in
fortress-like bases in Damascus and the provincial capitals, where their
advantages in air power and heavy weaponry have kept the opposition
from taking over the major cities.
The head of the state arms exporter said on Wednesday Russia is still delivering weapons to Syria and will continue to do so.
The Syrian uprising is the bloodiest of the Arab revolts that toppled
four autocrats in Libya, Egypt, Tunis and Yemen. The war has deepened
the Middle East's Shi'ite-Sunni divide.
Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on
Tuesday the death toll in Syria is likely approaching 70,000 with
civilians paying the price for the U.N. Security Council's lack of
action to end the war.
REUTERS/LBCI
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