Salehi meets embattled Syrian president

DAMASCUS: Iran's foreign minister met embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday, calling for a Syrian solution to the civil war, as a rights watchdog accused Damascus of waging "relentless, indiscriminate" attacks against its own people.

Speaking on arriving in Damascus, Ali Akbar Salehi said a solution to the 18-month conflict lies "only in Syria and within the Syrian family."

Salehi, who called this week for a simultaneous halt to the fighting by both regime and rebel forces, added this should be done in "partnership with international and regional organisations."

Following their meeting, Assad said the war engulfing Syria was targeting not only it but the "axis of resistance," a term Syria, Iran and Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah use to refer to their common opposition to Israel.

He also said "Syria has shown openness in dealing with all initiatives put forward to find a solution to the crisis. The key to any initiative's success is the sincerity of the intentions behind it."

Salehi said the country was "facing a problem, and we hope that this problem can be solved as soon as possible."

He also said "Syria has very strong, solid ties with Iran, especially at the political level," and that he would discuss the conflict with Syrian officials.

Salehi's call for an end to fighting came at a meeting in Cairo on Monday of the Syria "contact group," to which Iran, as well as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey belong.

Tehran, a staunch ally of the regime in Damascus, is also proposing the four countries dispatch observers to Syria in an effort to quell the violence.

Last month, the United Nations withdrew its own observers after both sides failed to respect an April ceasefire to which they had committed themselves.

In a statement, Amnesty International said "civilians, many of them children, are the main victims of a campaign of relentless and indiscriminate attacks by the Syrian army."

It said it had new evidence "of a pattern which has emerged in recent weeks in areas where government forces, pushed into retreat by opposition forces, are now indiscriminately bombing and shelling lost territory with disastrous consequences for the civilian population."

And the former head of Syria's chemical arsenal, Major General Adnan Sillu, was quoted by British newspaper The Times as saying he believed the regime would eventually use those weapons against civilians.