BEIRUT – Russia warned the west on Tuesday against unilateral action on Syria, a day after US President Barack Obama threatened “enormous consequences” if his Syrian counterpart used chemical or biological arms or even moved them in a menacing way.
Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, speaking after meeting China’s top diplomat, said Moscow and Beijing were committed to “the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law . . . and not to allow their violation”.
Qadri Jamil, Syrian deputy prime minister, also speaking in Moscow, dismissed Mr Obama’s threat as media fodder. “Direct military intervention in Syria is impossible because whoever thinks about it . . . is heading towards a confrontation wider than Syria’s borders,” he told a news conference.
Mr Jamil said the west was seeking an excuse to intervene, likening the focus on Syria’s chemical weapons to the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq on what proved to be groundless su ions that Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction.
He also appeared to suggest that Mr Assad’s departure could be discussed if talks between the government, the rebels and the international community ever took place, but ruled out the president’s resignation as a precondition. “After the dialogue begins, there’s nothing that should prevent the discussion of any issue – and that [Mr Assad’s position] is a question that can be discussed as well,” he said.
Russia and China have opposed military intervention in Syria throughout a 17-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad. They have vetoed three UN Security Council resolutions backed by western and Arab states that would have put more pressure on Damascus to end violence that has cost 18,000 lives.
In one of the latest battle zones, Syrian troops and tanks overran the Damascus suburbs of Mouadamiya on Tuesday, killing at least 20 young men and burning shops and houses before pulling back, residents and opposition activists said.
The bodies of the men, mostly shot at point-blank range, were found in basements and looted premises, bringing to 50 the death toll from the army’s two-day offensive to drive rebels from the Sunni Muslim suburb in the south-west of the capital.
“People are just starting to get out of their homes to see the destruction,” said one activist who gave her name as Hayat.
Opposition sources said Free Syrian Army rebels left Mouadamiya at dawn under heavy aerial and ground bombardment.
State-imposed curbs on media made it impossible to verify the reports of the violence, which followed another bloody day on Monday, when about 200 people were killed across the country, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
On Tuesday the Higher Leadership Council for the Syrian Revolution, an opposition group, claimed that Syria’s air force had redeployed 30 Sukhoi fighter-bomber Su-22 jets closer to cities where the army is battling to crush rebels in the north and east of the country.
“This type of Sukhoi is more geared to bombing missions than aerial combat. They are now within a more manageable range to hit the cities of Aleppo, Homs and Deir al-Zor and areas in Idlib province,” a spokesman for the group told Reuters from Amman.
Mr Obama used some of his strongest language yet on Monday to warn Mr Assad not to use unconventional weapons.
“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is [if] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilised,” he said. “That would change my calculus.”
Syria last month acknowledged for the first time that it had chemical or biological weapons and said it could use them if foreign countries attacked it.
The US-based Global Security website says there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria producing the nerve agents VX, sarin and tabun. It does not cite its sources.
Israel, still formally at war with Syria, has also debated whether to attack the unconventional arms sites, which it views as its gravest peril from the conflict next door.
● TRIPOLI – Four people were killed and more than 60 wounded in clashes between Sunni Muslims and Alawites in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli as the war in neighbouring Syria inflamed tensions there again, security and medical sources said on Tuesday.
Gunmen in the Sunni district of Bab al-Tabbaneh and their Alawite rivals in Jebel Mohsen exchanged gun and grenade fire in sporadic fighting overnight and into the day, despite action by Lebanese troops deployed in the port city, residents said.
The area is one of Lebanon’s most volatile sectarian fault lines and tensions in Tripoli have been heightened by the uprising in Syria. Clashes in the city killed 15 people in early June.
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