CNN reports: There is no guarantee that a sweeping new international agreement on Syria will succeed in ending the conflict there, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conceded, as opposition activists said the number of dead had skyrocketed in recent months.

“There is no guarantee that we are going to be successful. I just hate to say that,” Clinton told CNN.

But she expressed optimism that a new agreement hammered out Saturday would help ease President Bashar al-Assad out of power.

The first plan backed by Russia and China as well as the West, it calls for a transitional government as a step towards ending the 16-month uprising.

Opposition activists immediately criticized the deal as leaving open the possibility that al-Assad would remain in power.

“The new agreement provides vague language which is open to interpretation,” the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said in a statement Sunday. “This provides yet another opportunity for the regime’s thugs to play their favorite game in utilizing time in order to stop the popular Syrian Revolution and extinguish it with violence and massacres across Syria.”

AFP reports: Syrian rebel fighters and activists said they would boycott an opposition meeting in Cairo overnight, denouncing it as a “conspiracy” that served the policy goals of Damascus allies Moscow and Tehran.

The two-day meeting, organised by the main exiled opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council, and other smaller groups, was intended to forge a united front for a political transition in Syria and was held as government troops kept up their bombardment of rebel forces in the city of Homs.

“We refuse all kinds of dialogue and negotiation with the killers . . . and we will not allow anyone to impose on Syria and its people the Russian and Iranian agendas,” said a statement signed by the rebel Free Syrian Army and “independent” activists.

The signatories attacked the Cairo talks for “rejecting the idea of foreign military intervention to save the people . . . and ignoring the question of buffer zones protected by the international community, humanitarian corridors, an air embargo on Syria and the arming of rebel fighters”.

The Cairo talks come after world powers meeting in Geneva at the weekend agreed on proposals to transition from the government of President Bashar al-Assad, but the plan was branded a failure by both the rebels and the Syrian state media.

The boycotters claimed the Cairo talks follow the “dangerous decisions of the Geneva conference, which aim to safeguard the regime, to create a dialogue with it and to form a unity government with the assassins of our children”.

“The Cairo conference aims to give a new chance to UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to try again to convince Assad to implement his six-point plan . . . while forgetting that thousands have been martyred since the plan came into force,” they said.

More than 15,800 people have been killed since the uprising against the Assad regime began in March last year at the height of the Arab Spring rebellions across the Middle East and North Africa.

Of these, nearly 4700 have died since the ceasefire brokered by Mr Annan was supposed to have taken effect on April 12, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Bashar al-Assad might need to take refuge in his cyber-bunker to protect himself from today’s concerted attack by NATO Secretary General AndersFogh Rasmussen. After four laser-guided tweets struck in the space of less than ten minutes, cyber-smoke could be seen rising above Damascus.

Int. Community has duty to end bloodshed in #Syria. Conflict gone on for too long, cost too many lives and can destabilize whole region

— AndersFogh Rasmussen (@AndersFoghR) July 2, 2012

I welcome meeting of Action Group on #Syria in Geneva. International community clearly endorsed plan for democratic transition

— AndersFogh Rasmussen (@AndersFoghR) July 2, 2012

Right response to Syrian regime that lost all humanity/legitimacy remains a political response by international community. #Syria

— AndersFogh Rasmussen (@AndersFoghR) July 2, 2012

Last week @NATO condemned #Syria’s shooting down of Turkish aircraft in strongest possible terms. #Turkey

— AndersFogh Rasmussen (@AndersFoghR) July 2, 2012

Don’t read my jest the wrong way. To mock NATO’s tough stance is not to imply that what it should really be doing is launching real missiles. All I’m saying is, spare us from the posturing. It doesn’t help anyone.

Matt Lee writes: The much-hyped plan to end Syria’s misery and guide its transition to democracy appears to have fallen flat despite the endorsement of Western powers.

Russia’s objections gutted the most stringent conditions on a potential interim leader in Damascus. The Syrian opposition quickly dismissed the proposal as a waste of time and with “no value on the ground.”

The U.S. and its allies insist the plan will force Syrian President Bashar Assad from power. Russia disagrees and Assad is unlikely to acquiesce.

It all leaves U.N. envoy Kofi Annan’s efforts to end 15 months of bloodshed no better off than before.

Western nations needed to win Russia’s backing for the plan at an international conference Saturday in Geneva, so they dropped the demand that “those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the credibility of the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation” would be excluded from the process.

That was widely understood to mean Assad and much of his inner circle, and while the West insisted, Assad’s main allies in Moscow resisted intensely.

As a result, the plan contains no criteria for excluding anyone from the transitional government and leaves its composition entirely up to the “mutual consent” of Assad administration and the fractured opposition. Both sides presumably have unlimited veto power over members of the interim government, which could prolong the stalemate and keep Assad in charge.

Reuters reports: Syria’s opposition says the United States must overcome its fear of Islamists among the rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, and start arming the resistance movement to show it wants the entire ruling elite removed.

Islamists are among the most effective fighters against the Syrian leadership, some opposition figures said, and Washington needs to know that while these rebels are conservative Muslims they are a far cry from Afghan-style jihadi militants.

Frustration is growing that the United States will not supply weapons to the rebels, who have largely used small arms during the 16-month uprising against Assad and a state apparatus dominated by members of his Alawite minority.

“We have been kissing the hand of the United States and the rest of the world for the 16 months to intervene. Now, after Assad spared no one in Syria, the United States is surprised that al Qaeda may be operating in the country,” veteran opposition campaigner Fawaz al-Tello said from Istanbul.

Opposition campaigners and Free Syrian Army commanders said the rebels need weapons such as shoulder-fired missiles to destroy the tanks and bring down the helicopters that Assad is using against the uprising. Washington could anyway supply parts of the diverse rebel movement which are more to its liking.

“The U.S. has intelligence on the ground and by clever management it can channel weapons to the right people. First it has to give a clear signal that it really wants an end of the Alawite-dominated police state in Syria and not just the sidelining of Bashar,” said Tello, speaking from Istanbul.

Bloomberg reports: World powers agreed today on a plan for a Syrian transition government that doesn’t directly address the fate of President Bashar al-Assad.

The parties altered a draft agreement proposed by Kofi Annan, the envoy for the United Nations and Arab League, after Russia objected to language that would prohibit Assad and members of his inner circle from being part of a transitional government. The document also added a Russia-backed provision opposing “further militarization of the conflict,” alluding to Arab nations’ shipments of arms to the opposition.

International efforts to mediate a peace deal have stumbled over whether Assad must leave power before a transition can begin. The communique from foreign ministers in Geneva — which declares a “firm timetable” for actions without any dates or deadlines — may draw scrutiny over whether the U.S. and allies France and the U.K yielded too much to get a transition “road map” embraced by Russia and China.

The Guardian reports: There will be grave consequences if crisis talks at the United Nations fail to agree on a political resolution to end the violence in Syria, Kofi Annan has warned.

The joint Arab league-UN envoy told delegates at the emergency meeting in Geneva, including the foreign ministers of the UN security council’s five permanent members and representatives from the European Union and Arab states, that history “will judge us all harshly if we prove incapable of taking the right path today”.

Annan’s warning was echoed by the British foreign secretary, William Hague, who said it would be a catastrophe if the meeting failed to agree on a peace plan.

Hopes had been raised in recent days that the conference at the UN’s Palais des Nations was the best opportunity to find a peaceful solution to an escalating conflict that has claimed more than 15,000 lives. However, US and Russia have remained divided over key issues.

Annan said the war in Syria risked spilling over into a wider regional conflict of “grave severity”.

“By being here today you suggest intention to show leadership, but can you follow through?” he asked the delegates.

Annan all but criticised the representatives of the international community for failing to halt the bloodshed, saying the crisis should never have reached this point.

“Either unite to secure your common interests or divide and surely fail in your own individual way. Without your unity, your common resolve and your action now … nobody can win and everyone will lose in some way.”

Peter Apps writes: Western states trying to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are increasingly struggling to deal with, or even understand, Russia’s dogged support for him.

Arms deals, Russia’s naval base in Tartus and fear of Islamist militancy in a post-Assad Syria are all held up as potential explanations. But Russian officials and some others say that misses the wider point.

They say Moscow’s opposition to foreign-backed “regime change” reflects a fundamental disagreement with the West over sovereignty and the rights of states to deal with domestic instability by whatever means necessary.

“The Russian position can be explained by their hostility to any interference in the internal affairs of a country, especially in the current climate, because at home they have things to be worried about,” says Denis Bauchard, a former diplomat and expert on the Middle East at the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI).

Time and time again, Western officials have confidently briefed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was on the brink of dumping his long-term ally, only to be disappointed.

On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and counterparts from other major powers are due to meet in Geneva.

Once again, diplomats from several Western countries were predicting a shift. For the first time, they said, Russia had agreed with former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s plan and its requirement for a gradual transition of power.

But late on Thursday, it emerged that Russia had put forward amendments that the United States, Britain and France said were unacceptable.

At a Group of 20 summit in Mexico this month, British Prime Minister David Cameron was embarrassed after suggesting that Putin had agreed Assad should go, only to have Putin himself dismiss the idea.

French President Francois Hollande talked at length about the importance of winning Russia over, but had an awkward press conference with Putin in May having clearly failed to do so.

For every argument Hollande made before the assembled media, Putin had a counterargument. When Hollande asked if Russia would take Assad in exile, Putin replied that the Assad family had been invited to Paris much more often than to Moscow. While it is not clear that was true, Hollande still had to squirm.

Putin said the ousting of leaders did not necessarily lead to peace. He cited the case of Libya, where Moscow believes it was tricked by the West into supporting military intervention.

“Has it become safer there? Where are we moving? Is there an answer?” he asked.

Western states are still hoping that a series of military reverses for Assad will begin to tip the balance and force Putin to drop him. But it may not be that easy.

A death toll in Syria of well over 10,000 seems unlikely on its own to change Putin’s mind. Estimates vary widely of the number of dead in Chechnya – a conflict in which he was involved as prime minister and president – but often exceed 100,000. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: The guerillas of northern Syria are waiting for another special delivery. When it comes, any day now, it will make the same journey as the two previous shipments that have made their way here, across crop fields worn brown by the sun, up a steep and ragged concrete road and into a decrepit police station that is fast becoming one of the Syrian revolution’s most important clearing houses.

Here in this tiny village, men from all over the country have sought refuge. Some have stayed just long enough to be fed and watered before making the last leg of their journey to the safety of Turkey. Others have made this town of 5,000 home, arriving with their families and military weapons that they donated to the rebel cause.

Until last month, scrimping and scrounging weapons from defectors was the only way to resupply a tired and outgunned rebel army. But that changed in May, something the guerilla leadership readily acknowledges.

“True the weapons came,” said one Free Syria Army commander, Abdul-Rahman Hallak, sitting in the old police station’s meeting room. “There have been around 5,000. That’s true too. But it is not enough to win a war.” [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: With criminals and rebels helping them on their way, Syria’s army of refugees marches by night, in single file and silence, towards the Jordanian border. More than 140,000 desperate people, many of them women and children, have sought sanctuary from their neighbour since the uprising in their homeland began 13 months ago … and most now face an uncertain future.

Unlike Turkey, Jordan does not have a refugee camp and new arrivals are left to fend for themselves. They escape mostly “through the fence”, too frightened to leave Syria by its official borders.

For some this is because their documents were burned when the army torched their homes; for others it is because they are being hunted by the government because someone in their family is, or was, a fighter.

In Jordan most of the aid they are getting comes from local Islamic and Christian charities with limited resources. They get boxes of food from one group; another donates mattresses and kitchen sets. But it is not enough, and many wonder where the international NGOs are.

“They [the international aid agencies] have a lot of meetings,” said the head of one local charity well known to many refugees. “But I don’t see anything on the ground. There is all this talking and still the Syrians need beds and food and stoves.” Many live in buildings that were formerly abandoned and lack basic necessities like water and ventilation. Some of the poorest families are living in tents made from old jute sacks.

The border town of Mafraq in Jordan now hosts around 10,000 Syrian refugees, almost all from rebel neighbourhoods of the city of Homs, where the fighting has left many of the women widowed.

“Everyone from Homs is either dead or escaped,” said Miriam, a resident of the city who came to Mafraq four months ago. “Even the birds left.” [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: A general in the rebel Free Syria Army said on Friday that Syrian government forces had amassed around 170 tanks north of the city Aleppo, near the Turkish border, but there was no independent confirmation of the report.

General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the Higher Military Council, an association of senior officers who defected from President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, said the tanks had assembled at the Infantry School near the village of Musalmieh northeast of the city of Aleppo, 30 kms (19 miles) from the Turkish border.

“The tanks are now at the Infantry School. They’re either preparing to move to the border to counter the Turkish deployment or attack the rebellious (Syrian) towns and villages in and around the border zone north of Aleppo,” Sheikh told Reuters by telephone from the border.

He said the tanks were mostly from the 17th Mechanized Division.

Turkey deployed air defense weaponry along its border with Syria on Thursday, following Syria’s downing of a Turkish warlplane over the Mediterranean on Friday.

“I can confirm there are troops being deployed along the border in Hatay province. Turkey is taking precautions after its jet was shot down,” the official told Reuters news agency condition of anonymity.

The Guardian reports: Hopes of a political solution to the Syrian crisis suffered a fresh blow on Thursday when Russia insisted it would not endorse an internationally backed plan for a political transition that would require President Bashar al-Assad to surrender power.

Syrian opposition groups warned that Assad would have to step down and leave the country before they would negotiate future political arrangements.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said in Moscow: “We will not support and cannot support any meddling from outside or any imposition of recipes. This also concerns the fate of the president of the country, Bashar al-Assad.”

Lavrov was due to meet Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, to discuss Saturday’s Geneva conference, called in an attempt to agree broad support for a transitional national unity government in Damascus that could include anti-Assad forces.

But the Syrian National Council, the most coherent anti-Assad grouping, said it would reject any plan that did not include the unconditional departure of the president, his family and close allies. The SNC position was “firm and clear,” insisted spokesman George Sabra. Elements of the Syria-based internal opposition who once advocated dialogue with the regime also now say it is too late.

Simon Tisdall writes: Months of futile diplomatic tussling, UN deadlock and finger-pointing over Syria have boiled down to a dramatic, last-ditch effort this weekend to cut a deal between the US and Russia that eases President Bashar al-Assad from office and replaces him with an inclusive, transitional government that can halt the spiral towards all-out civil war.

Barack Obama’s administration first floated the idea of ditching Assad while simultaneously guaranteeing Russia’s interests in Syria more than a month ago. Despite Moscow’s rebuffs, the White House has kept at it. Obama spent two hours discussing Syria with a sceptical Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, at this month’s G20 summit in Mexico.

US officials did not pretend Putin was won over. But they did claim headway in identifying areas where US and Russian interests coincide, principally preventing a chaotic implosion and a regional war. “We agreed that we need to see a cessation of violence, that a political process has to be created to prevent civil war,” Obama said. “We have found many common points on this issue,” said Putin.

After follow-up meetings, Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, and Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, have agreed to attend an international summit on expediting Syria’s political transition to be convened in Geneva on Saturday by the UN envoy, Kofi Annan. Clinton and Lavrov will meet privately beforehand in St Petersburg on Friday.

US-Russian agreement on the way forward in Syria is crucial. Russia is the Syrian regime’s most powerful ally and protector, its main arms supplier, and a veto-wielding member of the UN security council. Its influence within the regime is unmatched. For its part, the US is the world’s foremost military and economic power with extensive Middle East interests, including guaranteeing Israel’s security and safeguarding its energy supply.

For the past 18 months they have been at loggerheads. Now, despite hardline statements ahead of the meeting, they appear to be trying to work together.

On the American side, the need for a deal is more pressing. Obama, facing a tough re-election battle this autumn and with his domestic record assailed from all sides, could use a big international win. His handling of the Arab spring was not impressive. Last week, as rightwingers see it, he “lost” Egypt, Washington’s main Arab ally, to the Muslim Brotherhood. Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, is describing Russia as America’s biggest strategic threat. Thus the meaningfulness of Obama’s attempt to reset relations with Moscow is also in the balance.

A transition deal in Syria would suit Obama for a host of other reasons. It would defuse criticism from American interventionists about US inaction. It would also help secure the stability of Iraq, on which so much American blood and treasure was spent in the past decade. It would prevent the spooked, volatile leaders of Turkey, a valued Nato ally, sliding into some kind of regional conflict.

Most of all, by stabilising Syria under a potentially more amenable regime with less allegiance to Iran, Obama might hope to lessen pressure from and on Israel to attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities this autumn. [Continue reading…]

Tony Karon writes: Beleaguered U.N. peace envoy Kofi Annan will host an international conference to address Syria‘s rapidly escalating civil war, but the meeting in Geneva on Saturday appears to have only lukewarm backing from the U.S. — and then only after Washington put the kibosh on the attendance of Iran, whose participation had been deemed vital by Annan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton indicated Wednesday that the U.S. would join representatives from Russia, China, Britain, France, Turkey, the EU and the Arab League in Geneva. The purpose of the meeting, per Annan, is to forge a consensus on the terms for a political solution among international players with stakes and influence in the Syrian conflict over terms for a political solution. The U.N. envoy believes that the best hope of pressing the combatants on the ground to observe his peace plan to which they signed up in April but have not implemented, is for the foreign powers on whose support they variously depend to agree on terms.

But even such key players as the U.S. and Russia can’t agree on a mechanism to resolve the conflict, and the exclusion of Iran and Saudi Arabia after the Obama Administration blocked Tehran’s participation suggests that Saturday’s meeting will simply restate the diplomatic stalemate.

“I have made it quite clear that I believe Iran should be part of the solution,” Annan said in Geneva last Friday. “If we continue the way we are going and competing with each other, it could lead to destructive competition and everyone will pay the price.”

The Obama Administration cited Iran’s role in backing up Syria’s bloody crackdown to declare Tehran’s involvement a “red line” for participating in the Geneva talks, and Annan presumably left out Saudi Arabia as a compensatory gesture to Russia which insists that those countries arming and funding Syria’s rebels share major responsibility for escalating the conflict. But it’s precisely because Iran and Saudi Arabia are playing out their preexisting regional and sectarian rivalries in the Syrian civil war that Annan wanted them at the table if there was to be any hope of achieving a solution without further bloodshed. Many in Washington, however, see the Syrian conflict through the same prism as Saudi Arabia does, seeking the ouster of Assad — Iran’s most important Arab ally — precisely in order to weaken Tehran.

Reuters reports: Turkish troops and military vehicles deployed towards the border with Syria on Thursday as a precaution after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan gave orders to react to any Syrian threat approaching the frontier.

Erdogan, who has given shelter in the border area to rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, announced the new rules of engagement for Turkish troops on the border after Syrian air defenses shot down a Turkish warplane last Friday.

“I can confirm there are troops being deployed along the border in Hatay province. Turkey is taking precautions after its jet was shot down,” a Turkish official said on condition of anonymity.

He said he did not know how many troops or vehicles were being moved but said they were being stationed in the Yayladagi, Altinozu and Reyhanli border areas of Turkey’s southern Hatay province. He said anti-aircraft guns were also being stationed along the border.

The Associated Press reports: A strong explosion rocked the Syrian capital Thursday, sending black smoke billowing into the sky.

The state TV said the explosion was in the parking lot of the Palace of Justice, a compound that houses several courts. The nature of Thursday’s blast was not immediately clear.

Reuters reports: Hamas said on Thursday that one of its members, Kamal Husni Ghanaja, had been killed in his home in Damascus and that it was trying to find who was behind what the Palestinian Islamist group described as a “cowardly murder”.

Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, said in a statement that it was trying “to identify the party behind the deplorable crime”, but did not immediately accuse Israel, its long-time enemy, of involvement in the killing.

A Palestinian source with ties to Hamas said Ghanaja’s charred body was found in a cupboard above the ceiling of his ransacked apartment in the Qudsia neighborhood of Damascus. A Hamas source said there were marks of torture on his body.

“The charred, scarred, body was concealed in a ceiling closet and a fire had engulfed the house which apparently the assassins had started,” said the source. The body was found on Wednesday, but most indications suggested Ghanaja was killed a day earlier, the source said.

Hamas’ political bureau abandoned Damascus some time ago and the organization has aligned itself with the uprising. It’s not too hard to guess who is the most likely culprit behind this murder. No, not Israel.