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UN aid chief starts Syria mission

Assad vows to crush terrorism as powers mull new resolution

AFP, Damascus
The UN humanitarian chief started a mission to Syria yesterday to urge the regime to allow aid into battered protest cities, a day after President Assad vowed to crush terrorism and pursue on reforms.
Valerie Amos flew in for a two-day visit, after an international outcry over President Bashar al-Assad's previous refusal to let her in, and is to followed by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on Saturday.
And Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said in talks with Amos that Syria is ready to cooperate with the visiting UN humanitarian delegation.
After the talks, Valerie Amos led a Syrian Red Crescent team to the devastated Baba Amr district of the city of Homs.
It was not clear what food or medicines the Red Crescent staff had been able to take with them into Baba Amr.
Relief teams have been waiting since Friday to move into the dis-trict, but the authorities blocked them citing danger from unexploded ordnance.
Meanwhile, the five major UN Security Council
"demands that the Syrian authorities immediately allow unhindered humanitarian access" to all cities.
The Russian and Chinese envoys did not comment on the draft following the talks with fellow permanent-
powers held talks Tuesday on a new US-led attempt to pass a resolution demanding an end to Syria's deadly attacks on protesters.
The new draft resolution, obtained by AFP, "demands" that the Syrian government "immediately" cease all violence, withdraw security forces from protest cities and release prisoners held over the protests.
The draft then adds that the council "calls" on opposition groups to "refrain from all violence" once these conditions are met.
The proposed resolution also
members the United States, Britain and France.
But Russia's deputy foreign minister, Gennady Gatilov, said earlier the new US resolution was unbalanced.
Several diplomats said, on condition of anonymity, that there would be no developments until UN-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan and UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos have finished their missions to Syria this week.
On the ground, tanks and troop carriers were headed for the embattled province of Idlib in northwest
Syria yesterday, said the Syrian National Council, the main oppositionalliance.
It also said "several people were killed" in bombardment of Maaret al-Numan, another town in Idlib province.
On Tuesday, at least 16 people were killed as Syrian regime forces launched a major assault on Herak, a town in the southern province of Daraa, a monitoring group said.
Syrian Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said yesterday the overall death toll since last March has now reached almost 8,500, with civilians accounting for three-quarters of those killed and the rest made up of soldiers, security forces and rebels.
Meanwhile, in contrast to Qatar and Saudi Arabia which have supported the arming of the rebels, Egypt's Foreign Minister Mohammed Amr warned that such intervention would lead to a civil war, his ministry said yesterday.