UK: On Syria, Clinton says " Each of these situations is unique"

The Guardian

US will not intervene in Syria as it has in Libya, says Hillary Clinton

US secretary of state's comments reported after Syrian state-run news agency says armed gangs attacked neighbourhoods in port city of Latakia
Staff and agencies

The US secretary of state, Hilary Clinton, has said the US will not intervene in Syria in the way it has in Libya.

Clinton was speaking in an interview recorded on Saturday and broadcast in the US on Sunday, hours after the Syrian government said 12 people had been killed during unrest in the port city of Latakia.

She said it was not yet clear how the situation in Syria would develop, and indicated that the violence was not at the same level as in Libya.

Clinton said the Syrian government's crackdown on protests had not yet engendered global condemnation or calls from the Arab League and others for a no-fly zone.

"Each of these situations is unique," she said, according to a transcript of the interview released by CBS and reported by Reuters. "Certainly we deplore the violence in Syria, we call as we have on all of these governments ... to be responding to their people's needs, not to engage in violence, permit peaceful protests and begin a process of economic and political reform."

Dozens of people have been killed in a number of Syrian cities after protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime flared up more than a week ago.

Earlier on Sunday the country's state-run news agency said armed gangs had attacked neighbourhoods in Latakia, firing guns from rooftops. Anti-government protesters accused government forces – which were deployed in Latakia on Saturday – of opening fire on them.

Activists said some demonstrators burned tyres, attacked businesses and set fire to an office of the ruling Ba'ath party. Ten people, including members of the security forces, residents and two members of "armed elements" died in the Latakia violence, the state-run news agency said, adding that at least two people were killed by rooftop snipers.

Around 200 others, mostly members of the security forces, were reported to have been injured.

Ammar Qurabi, an exile in Egypt who heads Syria's National Organisation for Human Rights, told the Associated Press that dozens of people had protested in Latakia before attacking the Ba'ath party's offices in the city.

Demonstrators also attacked a police station and the Ba'ath party offices in the town of Tafas, six miles north of the southern border city of Daraa, the epicentre of the anti-government protests.

An activist in Daraa told AP that up 1,200 people were still holding a silent sit-in the al-Omari mosque. He said the army and police had surrounded the area, but reported no violence. "I think they will storm our sit-in very soon," he said.

The spread of violence to ethnically mixed Latakia is significant, and Assad's government of minority Alawite Muslims blamed a prominent Sunni cleric in Qatar for inciting unrest. Bouthaina Shaaban, a presidential adviser, said Qatar-based Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi had incited Sunnis to revolt with a sermon in Doha on Friday.

Qaradawi, who has millions of followers around the world and is seen as one of most influential voices in Sunni Islam, praised the Syrian uprising and criticised the regime. Shabaan said those words were responsible for the unrest in Latakia, adding: "There was nothing [in Latakia] before Qaradawi's sermon on Friday. Qaradawi's words were a clear and honest invitation for sectarian strife."

Sectarian divisions are a sensitive topic in Syria, where Assad has used increased economic freedom and prosperity to win the allegiance of the prosperous Sunni Muslim merchant classes while punishing dissenters with arrest and imprisonment.

Assad has placed his fellow Alawites, adherents of a mystical offshoot of Shia Islam, into most positions of power in Syria. He has built a close relationship with Iran, allowing it to extend its influence into Lebanon, where it provides money and weapons to Hezbollah militants.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/27/report-12-killed-syrian-port-city