Syrian forces retake Damascus suburbs; showdown at UN

Syrian government forces reasserted control of Damascus suburbs on Tuesday after beating back rebels at the capital's gates, ahead of a push at the United Nations for a resolution calling for President Bashar al-Assad to give up powers. Western and Arab diplomats descended on UN headquarters to back a Security Council resolution which would endorse an Arab League call for Assad to delegate powers to his deputy and defuse a 10-month uprising against his family's dynastic rule.
Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby will make the case for the bloc's plan, with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe and Britain's William Hague presenting a united western front. The fate of the resolution depends on whether the Arabs and Western states can get Russia - long Assad's ally - to abstain rather than veto it.
Diplomats have been haggling for days to find a text Moscow will not block, with a main sticking point being the degree to which it expresses support for the Arab plan for Assad to give up powers, UN diplomats said under condition of anonymity. Russia opposes a resolution explicitly backing Arab League calls for Assad to step aside, or which does not rule out the use of force to push him out.
"The Western draft Security Council resolution on Syria will not lead to a search for compromise," Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying. "Pushing it is a path to civil war." British Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament: "What ... the foreign secretary is doing today with colleagues at the UN Security Council is trying to build the strongest possible resolution and say to the Russians: 'Really, if you go on vetoing or preventing these motions, you are going to be completely outside, not just world public opinion, but the very, very clear, expressed opinion of the Arab League themselves.'"
On the battlefront, activists in eastern districts of Damascus said troops fired in the air as they advanced beyond areas from which the defector Free Syrian Army withdrew, capping three days of fighting activists said killed at least 100 people. Tanks also swarmed into the area.
"The suburbs are under an unannounced curfew. A small grocery shop opened this morning and soldiers came and beat the owner and forced him to shut down," said an activist in the Ain Tarma neighbourhood on Tuesday. Others said residents of some eastern districts were allowed to flee their neighbourhoods in vehicles by advancing troops, but that security forces in the district of Irbin had rounded up young men at gunpoint and detained them.
Events on the ground are difficult to confirm as the Syrian government restricts most access by journalists. Activist groups said 25 people were killed on Monday in Damascus suburbs and dozens more died in other parts of the country, mostly in raids in and around the central city of Homs, which has seen some of the heaviest attacks by Assad's forces.
The uprising against Assad - one of the most violent revolts of the "Arab Spring" - has entered a new phase in recent weeks, with an insurgency whose leadership is based in Turkey daring to show its face at the outskirts of the capital. A last-ditch bid by Moscow to broker talks between Assad's government and rebels foundered when the opposition refused to attend, citing the continued killing, torture and imprisonment of the president's opponents.
Washington says countries need to accept that Assad's rule is doomed and stop shielding him in the Security Council. "I do not see how he can sustain his rule of Syria," US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Tuesday. A draft of the UN Security Council resolution obtained by Reuters emphasises "the need to resolve the current crisis in Syria peacefully" and neither authorises the use of force against Assad nor explicitly bars it.