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Obama steps up the pressure on Syria – calls on Assad to step down
Syria’s warning against the deployment of Arab troops comes amid signs of stronger coordination between military and political opponents of Assad’s regime.
The Syrian National Council, a political umbrella group, said it has opened a liaison office and hotline with the armed rebels to follow developments on the ground.
The rebels claim to have gathered some 40,000 fighters under their command since anti-government protests broke out in mid-March.
Dissident tribal chief Nawaf al-Bashir warned that the rebels will be forced to intensify their armed struggle if the Security Council fails to act.
“If the Security Council does not take the necessary decisions, then Syria’s revolutionaries and the Free Syrian Army will be forced to act for themselves,” Bashir said in Istanbul.
In fresh violence on Tuesday, at least 14 civilians were killed, eight of them when a blast hit a minibus in Idlib province in the northwest, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in Syria since the protests erupted in March, the United Nations estimated last month.
Meanwhile, a senior military official in Israel said his country had serious concerns about what will happen to “huge stockpiles” of chemical and biological weapons if the Assad regime collapses.
Copyright 2012 AFP
