The Daily Monitoring Report – wednesday – 11-7-2012

July 11^th, 2012

- Yesterday, some 71 people were martyred at the hands of the Assad battalions, mostly in Deir Ez Zor, Rif Dimashq, Idleb and Homs.⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾Political Mobility

- The Syrian National Council (SNC) announced that its chairman Abdul Basit Sida would visit Moscow today (Wednesday) in response to the invitation of the Russian Foreign Ministry. The SNC also added that Sida would assert- during his meeting with the Russian officials- that he insists on the departure of Al-Assad and his regime before considering the transitional stage in the country.^(1)(2)(3)

- A number of the Syrian National Council (SNC)’s members held a press conference in Moscow in which they asserted that they insist on toppling the Assad regime as a basic step for solving the Syrian crisis.⁽²⁾

- The Syrian National Council (SNC)’s spokeswoman Basma Qadmani said- in the press conference- that any negotiations on the Syrian crisis should be under the auspices of the United Nations and also should be guaranteed by the international community.⁽²⁾

- Farah Al Atassi, executive director of US-based American Arab Communication and Translation Center, criticized the international envoy to Syria Kofi Annan’s call for establishing a dialogue between the Assad regime and the armed Syrian opposition. She also added that Annan was supposed to present his proposals on peace in the “Friends of Syria Group” conference held two days ago in Paris, not from Damascus or Tehran.⁽²⁾

Internal Situation

- Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) claimed that the authorities had aborted an infiltration attempt by what they called “armed terrorist groups” coming from Lebanon to Syria in many sites of Talkalakh countryside in Homs countryside, and could also incur them heavy losses.⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾

Activities of Civil Organizations

- The number of journalists who have been killed at the hands of the Assad troops hit 33 persons since March 2011.⁽⁶⁾

- Khaled Erqsosi, head of operations in the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, announced that an aid worker died on Tuesday a day after he was shot in a clearly marked ambulance in the town of Deir al-Zor. Khaled Khaffaji was the fifth member of the aid group’s staff to be killed in the conflict in Syria, and the second to be killed in less than a month. “We are devastated. The loss of Khaled is completely unacceptable,” Abdul Rahman al-Attar, the president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, said in a statement.^(1)(3)(4)

Political Stances

Syria

- The Syrian state TV claims that ” The authorities have freed 275 prisoners involved in recent incidents, but none of them have blood on their hands,”⁽⁴⁾

Arab

- Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Arabi calls on all Syrian parties to stop violence. He also asserted that he rejects military intervention for solving the Syrian crisis. He also called for giving Annan an opportunity for reaching a political settlement.⁽²⁾

International

- The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits Russia for considering the Syrian crisis with the Russian President Vladimir Putin.⁽⁶⁾

- Annan said Assad had proposed “building an approach from the ground up in some of the districts where we have extreme violence – to try and contain the violence in those districts and, step by step, build up and end the violence across the country”. Annan also said he needed to discuss the proposal with the Syrian opposition and could not give further details. In addition, it was not clear how or where he planned to do this with opposition leaders.⁽³⁾⁽⁶⁾

- International envoy to Syria Kofi Annan said that Iran must be “part of the solution” to the bloody crisis in its close ally Syria, after talks he held in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi. He also added that his presence in Tehran proves that he is convinced that Iran can play a positive role in solving the Syrian crisis.^(1)(2)(3)(6)

- “I don’t think anybody with a straight face could argue that Iran has had a positive impact on developments in Syria,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.⁽³⁾

- Russia said Tuesday it wanted to host a new meeting of foreign powers concerning the Syria crisis but stressed that the talks should not decide the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said the attempt made in Geneva on June 30 to save international envoy Kofi Annan’s tattered peace plan for the crisis needed to be continued with the involvement countries such as Iran. “We would welcome organizing another Action Group meeting in Moscow. But we would also not be opposed to Geneva if special representative (Annan) and group participants find this more appropriate,” he said.⁽²⁾⁽⁶⁾

Sources

1	Asharq Al-Awsat
2	Aljazeera net
3	Reuters
4	AFP
5	AP
6	Guardian
7	Telegraph