Another 17 dead as U.N. moves against Syria

Syrian security forces killed at least 17 protesters yesterday as Europeans in the United Nations Security Council moved toward agreement with Russia and China on a resolution urging Syria to stop the violence.

The killings occurred yesterday in the central flashpoint town of Homs, the northern province of Idlib and southern area of Daraa, Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, said by phone today, Bloomberg reports.

Envoys from Britain, France, Germany and Portugal said late yesterday that supported a draft resolution that takes into account Russia’s concerns about their threat to impose sanctions on Syria’s government, it reports.

“I think we are very close,” Ambassador Baso Sangqu of South Africa, a Security Council member, said after a two-hour meeting in New York yesterday. “I think something will emerge.”

The bloody crackdown on protestors that began seven months ago has left more than 3,600 civilians dead, according to Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

About 30,000 people have been detained and 13,000 are still being held, according to Qurabi and Merhi.

Bloomberg reports:

Al Arabiya television broadcast video today of army defectors saying they had attacked and killed agents of the government and freed 27 children and their teacher. Merhi said he could not verify if the statements were true.

At the UN, Sangqu said the new draft won’t impose sanctions automatically, allowing for some flexibility before they are triggered. European countries abandoned a measure circulated last month that would have imposed an arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze, replacing it on Sept. 27 with a text that “expresses determination” to impose sanctions in the event the violence continues.

“I think it can be done,” Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said of a possible agreement. The Security Council is due to meet again today, with a vote possible as early as tomorrow.

European countries proposing the resolution had dropped demands for immediate sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad's government, BBC reports.

The draft, proposed by the UK, France, Germany and Portugal and backed by the US, threatens sanctions only if the repression of protests does not end, and was aimed at winning the support of Russia and China.

But Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the proposed resolution would encourage violence, and was "a continuation of the Libya policy of regime change".