Syrian authorities said on Thursday that their ambassador to neighboring Iraq had been dismissed. It was the first official, if roundabout, confirmation that the diplomat had defected in a new fracturing of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which has faced a slow but growing rash of desertions in the uprising against him.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry in Damascus said that the envoy, Nawaf Fares, "has been relieved of his duties" and "no longer has any link with the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad" or with the ministry, the official SANA news agency reported.
The declaration came a day after the envoy made his own announcement in a statement from an unidentified location that he had defected and renounced his membership in Mr. Assad's Baath Party, urging "all honest members of this party to follow my path because the regime has turned it to an instrument to kill people and their aspiration to freedom.” The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said on Thursday that Mr. Fares was currently in Qatar, Iraq's Al Arabiya channel reported.
In its statement on Thursday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the ambassador had "made press statements that contradict the duties of his position of defending the country's stances and issues, which demands legal and behavioral accountability." It also accused him of leaving his embassy in Baghdad without prior consent.
Mr. Fares was the first Syrian ambassador to defect since the uprising broke out in March 2011, and the second high-ranking exit from Mr. Assad’s government in less than week, following the departure last Thursday of Manaf Tlass, a general in the elite Republican Guard who is the son of a former defense minister.
The departures came as diplomacy surrounding Syria's bloody uprising seemed no closer to ending the increasing violence. Indeed, antigovernment activists posted video claiming that Syrian forces had added unguided cluster bombs, an indiscriminate weapon designed to maximize damage and casualties, to their arsenal of attack helicopters, artillery and tank convoys.
The videos, posted earlier in the week and first highlighted by a pseudonymous blogger known as Brown Moses, showed a pile of Soviet-era cluster bomblets and a canister to deploy them lying on the ground. The videos were said to have been taken in the mountainous region near the city of Hama, but the location could not be independently confirmed. It also could not be determined from the images whether the canister, a so-called RBK container, had failed to release the bomblets midflight, preventing them from arming, or whether they had been taken from another location and placed in front of the videographer. The bomblets appeared to have been arranged to face in the same direction, indicating that they may have been moved.
“These videos show identifiable cluster bombs and submunitions,” said Steve Goose, the arms division director at Human Rights Watch in a statement on Thursday. “If confirmed, this would be the first documented use of these highly dangerous weapons by the Syrian armed forces during the conflict.”
Another video surfaced this week claiming to show a cluster-bomb strike this week around the southern city of Dara'a, the birthplace of the anti=Assad uprising nearly 17 months ago, but its location and timing could not be independently confirmed.
Kofi Annan, the special envoy whose peace plan for ending the conflict in is paralyzed and at risk of complete collapse, asked the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to threaten the Syrian government and the rebels with consequences for failure to halt the escalating violence.
The Security Council has already passed two resolutions that request compliance with Mr. Annan’s plan but do not carry coercive pressure. “You should insist on implementation of your decisions and send a message to all that there will be consequences for noncompliance,” Mr. Annan, who represents the United Nations and Arab League, told the Council.
Mr. Annan did not specify that the Council should threaten measures under Chapter 7 of its charter, which authorizes economic sanctions, and if necessary, military action, as was done in the Libyan conflict last year. But his request quickly laid bare the makings of a potential confrontation among the five permanent members of the Council, whose effort to speak in a unified way on the Syria conflict has often masked serious divisions.
Representatives of the United States, Britain and France said they would address Mr. Annan’s request with a resolution that included Chapter 7 sanctions. But Russia and China, which have twice blocked such coercive measures, were expected to resist. Russia, the Syrian government’s most important foreign supporter, circulated its own draft resolution that does not include the Chapter 7 provision.
Alexander Pankin, the ranking Russian diplomat at the Security Council, said that Mr. Annan had “asked that the Council speak in a united and single voice. And there will be consequences. But consequences does not mean under a certain chapter or certain article.”
Mr. Annan, who spoke to the Council by video link from his Geneva office after having visited Syria, Iran and Iraq, also said that Mr. Assad was open to the idea of an interlocutor between him and the political opposition. An interlocutor presumably would allow a dialogue without the two sides having to directly talk to each other, laying the groundwork for a political transition as specified in Mr. Annan's peace plan.
But a number of opposition leaders rejected that idea on Thursday. "Our position is clear, there can be no dialogue or negotiations, direct or indirect, there can be no transitional government until Assad leaves," said Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition umbrella group. "We cannot dialogue with a criminal."
Mr. Annan addressed the Council less than two weeks before the July 20 deadline for reauthorizing the 300-member observer mission in Syria, assigned to monitor a cease-fire and other provisions of the plan. The observers, who are unarmed and have no enforcement authority, suspended work a month ago because the Syrian government and its armed antagonists were ignoring Mr. Annan’s plan, and the rising violence had made the mission’s work too dangerous.
Both Mr. Annan and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, want the Council to renew the mission’s mandate. Mr. Ban has said a withdrawal of the mission would send the wrong signal and encourage more violence. While the Council is expected to reauthorize the monitors, the size of their group and duration of deployment remain to be negotiated.
In the region itself, news of Mr. Fares's defection was slow to emerge. Al Jazeera first reported it in an unattributed dispatch.
Ayad Allawi, a prominent Sunni politician in Iraq and a former interim prime minister, reported later in a Twitter post: “Reliable sources have informed me of the defection of Nawaf Fares, the Syrian Ambassador to Iraq.”
Mr. Fares, who received the Baghdad posting in 2008, was described at the time of his appointment as a well-connected statesman whose family was rooted partly in the Sunni tribal society of Iraq’s Anbar Province, which extends to Syria’s eastern desert.
Burhan Ghalioun, a member of executive bureau and former leader of the Syrian National Council, said he also had been made aware of the defection, while visiting Moscow with a delegation of opposition figures.
“We welcome the defection of the Syrian ambassador to Iraq,” Mr. Ghalioun said. “We have called upon high-ranking officials whether in the military or in the diplomatic service to defect from this regime and join the revolution of dignity.”
Both General Tlass and Ambassador Fares were members of a privileged Sunni elite in a Syrian government dominated by Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect. A growing number of other high-ranking Sunnis, mostly from the military, have been leaving Syria in recent weeks, reflecting what Syrian political analysts have called the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict.
While opposition groups are mostly Sunni and have called the defections the beginning of the end for Mr. Assad, outside political analysts are more cautious. Alawites, who represent only about 12 percent of the population, remain intensely loyal to Mr. Assad, and none of his close Alawite confidants have abandoned him.
“There are indications to me that the Sunni insulation is cracking,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert who is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But these people are not from the core. It’s an important distinction.”
Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from London, Andrew Roth from Moscow, and Dalal Mawad and Neil MacFarquhar from Beirut, Lebanon.
In a statement, the Foreign Ministry in Damascus said that the envoy, Nawaf Fares, "has been relieved of his duties" and "no longer has any link with the Syrian Embassy in Baghdad" or with the ministry, the official SANA news agency reported.
The declaration came a day after the envoy made his own announcement in a statement from an unidentified location that he had defected and renounced his membership in Mr. Assad's Baath Party, urging "all honest members of this party to follow my path because the regime has turned it to an instrument to kill people and their aspiration to freedom.” The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said on Thursday that Mr. Fares was currently in Qatar, Iraq's Al Arabiya channel reported.
In its statement on Thursday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the ambassador had "made press statements that contradict the duties of his position of defending the country's stances and issues, which demands legal and behavioral accountability." It also accused him of leaving his embassy in Baghdad without prior consent.
Mr. Fares was the first Syrian ambassador to defect since the uprising broke out in March 2011, and the second high-ranking exit from Mr. Assad’s government in less than week, following the departure last Thursday of Manaf Tlass, a general in the elite Republican Guard who is the son of a former defense minister.
The departures came as diplomacy surrounding Syria's bloody uprising seemed no closer to ending the increasing violence. Indeed, antigovernment activists posted video claiming that Syrian forces had added unguided cluster bombs, an indiscriminate weapon designed to maximize damage and casualties, to their arsenal of attack helicopters, artillery and tank convoys.
The videos, posted earlier in the week and first highlighted by a pseudonymous blogger known as Brown Moses, showed a pile of Soviet-era cluster bomblets and a canister to deploy them lying on the ground. The videos were said to have been taken in the mountainous region near the city of Hama, but the location could not be independently confirmed. It also could not be determined from the images whether the canister, a so-called RBK container, had failed to release the bomblets midflight, preventing them from arming, or whether they had been taken from another location and placed in front of the videographer. The bomblets appeared to have been arranged to face in the same direction, indicating that they may have been moved.
“These videos show identifiable cluster bombs and submunitions,” said Steve Goose, the arms division director at Human Rights Watch in a statement on Thursday. “If confirmed, this would be the first documented use of these highly dangerous weapons by the Syrian armed forces during the conflict.”
Another video surfaced this week claiming to show a cluster-bomb strike this week around the southern city of Dara'a, the birthplace of the anti=Assad uprising nearly 17 months ago, but its location and timing could not be independently confirmed.
Kofi Annan, the special envoy whose peace plan for ending the conflict in is paralyzed and at risk of complete collapse, asked the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday to threaten the Syrian government and the rebels with consequences for failure to halt the escalating violence.
The Security Council has already passed two resolutions that request compliance with Mr. Annan’s plan but do not carry coercive pressure. “You should insist on implementation of your decisions and send a message to all that there will be consequences for noncompliance,” Mr. Annan, who represents the United Nations and Arab League, told the Council.
Mr. Annan did not specify that the Council should threaten measures under Chapter 7 of its charter, which authorizes economic sanctions, and if necessary, military action, as was done in the Libyan conflict last year. But his request quickly laid bare the makings of a potential confrontation among the five permanent members of the Council, whose effort to speak in a unified way on the Syria conflict has often masked serious divisions.
Representatives of the United States, Britain and France said they would address Mr. Annan’s request with a resolution that included Chapter 7 sanctions. But Russia and China, which have twice blocked such coercive measures, were expected to resist. Russia, the Syrian government’s most important foreign supporter, circulated its own draft resolution that does not include the Chapter 7 provision.
Alexander Pankin, the ranking Russian diplomat at the Security Council, said that Mr. Annan had “asked that the Council speak in a united and single voice. And there will be consequences. But consequences does not mean under a certain chapter or certain article.”
Mr. Annan, who spoke to the Council by video link from his Geneva office after having visited Syria, Iran and Iraq, also said that Mr. Assad was open to the idea of an interlocutor between him and the political opposition. An interlocutor presumably would allow a dialogue without the two sides having to directly talk to each other, laying the groundwork for a political transition as specified in Mr. Annan's peace plan.
But a number of opposition leaders rejected that idea on Thursday. "Our position is clear, there can be no dialogue or negotiations, direct or indirect, there can be no transitional government until Assad leaves," said Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition umbrella group. "We cannot dialogue with a criminal."
Mr. Annan addressed the Council less than two weeks before the July 20 deadline for reauthorizing the 300-member observer mission in Syria, assigned to monitor a cease-fire and other provisions of the plan. The observers, who are unarmed and have no enforcement authority, suspended work a month ago because the Syrian government and its armed antagonists were ignoring Mr. Annan’s plan, and the rising violence had made the mission’s work too dangerous.
Both Mr. Annan and the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, want the Council to renew the mission’s mandate. Mr. Ban has said a withdrawal of the mission would send the wrong signal and encourage more violence. While the Council is expected to reauthorize the monitors, the size of their group and duration of deployment remain to be negotiated.
In the region itself, news of Mr. Fares's defection was slow to emerge. Al Jazeera first reported it in an unattributed dispatch.
Ayad Allawi, a prominent Sunni politician in Iraq and a former interim prime minister, reported later in a Twitter post: “Reliable sources have informed me of the defection of Nawaf Fares, the Syrian Ambassador to Iraq.”
Mr. Fares, who received the Baghdad posting in 2008, was described at the time of his appointment as a well-connected statesman whose family was rooted partly in the Sunni tribal society of Iraq’s Anbar Province, which extends to Syria’s eastern desert.
Burhan Ghalioun, a member of executive bureau and former leader of the Syrian National Council, said he also had been made aware of the defection, while visiting Moscow with a delegation of opposition figures.
“We welcome the defection of the Syrian ambassador to Iraq,” Mr. Ghalioun said. “We have called upon high-ranking officials whether in the military or in the diplomatic service to defect from this regime and join the revolution of dignity.”
Both General Tlass and Ambassador Fares were members of a privileged Sunni elite in a Syrian government dominated by Mr. Assad’s minority Alawite sect. A growing number of other high-ranking Sunnis, mostly from the military, have been leaving Syria in recent weeks, reflecting what Syrian political analysts have called the increasingly sectarian nature of the conflict.
While opposition groups are mostly Sunni and have called the defections the beginning of the end for Mr. Assad, outside political analysts are more cautious. Alawites, who represent only about 12 percent of the population, remain intensely loyal to Mr. Assad, and none of his close Alawite confidants have abandoned him.
“There are indications to me that the Sunni insulation is cracking,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a Syria expert who is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But these people are not from the core. It’s an important distinction.”
Reporting was contributed by Alan Cowell from London, Andrew Roth from Moscow, and Dalal Mawad and Neil MacFarquhar from Beirut, Lebanon.