ISTANBUL: Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the "legitimate demands of the Syrian people must be met, right here, right now" as Western and Arab countries met in Istanbul on Sunday to try to agree on how to support armed rebels fighting to unseat President Bashar al-Assad.
Erdogan was addressing a meeting of mostly foreign ministers from around 70 countries including the United States and leading European Union and Gulf powers who call themselves the "Friends of Syria".
Assad's forces pounded a pro-opposition neighbourhood of Homs city with artillery fire and mortars on Saturday, as his crackdown continued a day after the Syrian Foreign Ministry announced that the year-old revolt was over.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian forces killed a young man at dawn on Sunday as they carried out raids and arrests in the town of Damir in Damascus province. It said a soldier was also wounded in the province when a military checkpoint came under attack.
It also said defectors attacked an army convoy near the village of Janoudiya in Idlib province, close to the Turkish border, killing at least four soldiers and wounding 11.
In the same province, a woman was shot dead by a sniper in the town of Maarat al-Nuaman during army raids, it said.
Gulf Arab countries within the "Friends of Syria" group have pushed for more support to be given to the defector-based Free Syrian Army (FSA), which has taken up the baton of rebellion after months of violent repression of unarmed protesters.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said on Saturday it was a "duty" to arm the rebels.
But Western countries fear strident opposition from Russia and China as well as the prospect of being sucked in to a bloody and intractable conflict.
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