Syria warns against recognition of opposition council (Reuters)

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria threatened on Sunday to retaliate against any country that formally recognizes a recently established opposition National Council seeking international support for the six-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The formation of the council has been welcomed by Assad’s Western critics, including the United States and France, however they have not embraced it diplomatically as they did the Libyan rebels who subsequently overthrew Muammar Gaddafi.

“We will take tough measures against any state which recognizes this illegitimate council,” Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told a news conference in Damascus.

Speaking alongside a group of Latin American ministers who vid Syria to show support for Assad, Moualem also dismissed Turkish criticism of Assad’s crackdown and said no one should think the West would launch military action against Syria.

“The West will not attack Syria because no one will pay the bill,” he said. “The West chose economic sanctions to starve our people, under the pretext of protecting human rights.”

The United Nations says 2,900 people have been killed in Assad’s crackdown on mainly peaceful protests. On Saturday, activists said security forces killed at least two people when they opened fire on tens of thousands of mourners at the funeral of a Kurdish opposition figure.

Moualem described Mishaal al-Tammo as a martyr killed by terrorists, suggesting he was targeted because he opposed foreign intervention in Syria. Tammo’s family have blamed Syrian authorities for his death.

Activists said Syrian security forces broke up brief demonstrations in the eastern city of Qamishli as people gathered for the funerals of people killed on Saturday at Tammo’s funeral.

Turkey condemned Tammo’s “heinous assassination” and also criticized the reported assault on another prominent opposition figure, former parliamentarian Riad Seif, appearing to blame Syrian authorities for both attacks.

“Turkey expects the Syrian administration to realize as soon as possible that the acts of violence designed to suppress the opposition in Syria… cannot turn back the course of history,” a foreign ministry statement said.

TENSION NEAR BORDER

Once a close ally of Assad’s, Turkey has hosted several meetings of the opposition National Council. It has also given shelter to thousands of Syrian refugees, as well as the most senior Syrian army officer to defect from Assad’s military.

CNN Turk channel said on Sunday Syrian police were stopping Turkish citizens from entering Syria at the border town of Nusaybin, a few miles (km) north of Qamishli where Tammo was killed, because of increased tensions in the area.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has said he plans to impose sanctions on Syria and has launched military exercises in Hatay province, where Syria has a longstanding territorial claim.

“Syria’s hands are not tied,” Moualem responded. “Whoever throws a rose at it, it will throw a rose back.”

The Syrian leadership blames armed groups backed by foreign powers for the violence, saying 1,100 members of the security forces have been killed since the unrest broke out in March.

The official SANA news agency said Assad told the ministers from Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, part of a group at odds with the United States, that Syria was focusing on “political reform…and ending the phenomenon of armed (groups).”

In response to the protests, Assad has formally ended nearly 50 years of emergency rule and pledged multi-party parliamentary elections next year, but opponents say the moves are meaningless while security forces continue to kill protesters.

Diplomats and analysts say the protests have been largely peaceful but there have been a steady flow of army defections and increasing reports of armed clashes with security forces.

“Many in the West say this is a peaceful revolution and (these are) peaceful demonstrations,” Moualem said. “They do not acknowledge the presence of armed terrorist groups, (but) they finance them and smuggle weapons to them.”

Bourhan Ghalioun, chairman of the opposition National Council, said in Sweden on Saturday the organization was seeking Assad’s removal by peaceful methods and called on global powers to do more to help achieve this goal.

“We demand that the international community assume its responsibilities and find ways to help protect Syrian civilians,” he said, sharply criticizing Russia for helping block a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria.

In Damascus, Moualem criticized European countries where he said Syrian embassies had been attacked by protesters, saying that if they did not meet their obligations to protect foreign missions Syria would respond in similar fashion.

Eleven people were arrested in Vienna on Saturday after they broke into a building housing the Syrian embassy and consulate, a police spokeswoman said.

Activists said on Sunday a prominent tribal leader from the eastern province of Deir al-Zor was released after some months in detention. Sheikh Nawaf al-Bashir, leader of the large Baqqara tribe which extends into the Iraqi province of Anbar, was detained in August after criticizing government attacks on demonstrators in the city of Deir al-Zor.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Simon Cameron-Moore in Istanbul and Patrick Lannin in Stockholm; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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