Assad opponents push for ‘safe haven’ in Syria

TEHRAN: Fierce fighting rocked northern Syria yesterday as Turkey pressed its call for internationally protected safe havens in the country to stem the outflow of refugees and protesters demanded the fall of the regime.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon told Syria’s premier in Tehran that Damascus must stop using heavy weapons in the conflict, and the International Committee of the Red Cross warned of a fast deteriorating humanitarian situation.
Ban’s new appeal came as an opposition figure said opponents of President Bashar Assad need a foreign-protected safe haven in Syria if they are to form a credible transitional authority.
Basma Kodmani, who quit the Syrian National Council (SNC) recently saying it was out of touch with forces on the ground, said such a body should include the SNC, the Free Syria Army and representatives of all Syria’s religious and ethnic groups.
“Such a provisional government needs to be based inside Syria in the liberated areas,” she told Reuters .
The UN chief said he told Syrian Prime Minister Wael Al-Halaqi and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem that the fighting must stop, “with the primary responsibility resting on the government to halt its use of heavy weapons.”
He said at a news conference in Tehran: “What is important at this time is that all the parties must stop the violence. All those actors who may be providing arms to both sides... must stop.”
Ban said he had asked Iran to support his call on Syria, “and I have a strong assurance from Iran that it will do so.”
He also called on Iran to free all its political prisoners in his speech delivered in Tehran on the sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement summit.
Ban said that allowing the Iranian people’s voice to be heard was especially important ahead of the country’s 2013 presidential election.
“Restricting freedom of expression and suppressing social activism will only set back development and plant the seeds of instability,” Ban warned.
Iran was also under diplomatic pressure yesterday after a UN watchdog report said it had expanded its nuclear program and was hampering inspections, and the leaders of the UN and Egypt criticized its key ally Syria.
Iranian officials responded to the International Atomic Energy Agency report by denying allegations it was cleaning up a suspect military base and saying the document’s release was timed to steal the spotlight from the Non-Aligned Movement gathering.
Ban, in a speech at a Iranian diplomats’ college, expanded on criticism of Iran’s nuclear stand that he had delivered in meetings with Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and at the opening of the summit.
He urged Iran to comply with the IAEA and with UN resolutions on the issue, stressing the “cost of Iran’s current trajectory” and saying that “any country at odds with the international community... finds itself isolated from the thrust of common progress.”
At the summit, he warned that the international “war of words” over the nuclear showdown risked degenerating into “a war of violence,” implicitly referring to Israeli and US threats to possibly bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, who handed over the NAM chair to Iran, also embarrassed Tehran by publicly siding with the Syrian opposition.