BRUSSELS/DAMASCUS: The EU will slap fresh sanctions on President Bashar Assad's regime next week and clarify the rules on insuring items embargoed for delivery to Syria, including arms, EU diplomats said yesterday.
European Union foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday are expected to announce an asset freeze and travel ban on five Syrian firms and one individual, in what will be the 16th round of restrictive measures against the Assad regime.
They will also state "in black and white" that insuring arms deliveries to Syria is banned under an arms embargo decided last year, one source said.
The wording of the statement, which diplomats said was agreed Wednesday by ambassadors of the 27 EU nations, follows an incident this week involving a British-insured Russian cargo ship, allegedly carrying attack helicopters for Syria.
The United States alerted Britain to the consignment and British security services told insurers Standard Club that providing insurance for the shipment would breach EU sanctions, reports said.
Standard Club then cancelled insurance for the ship as well as others in the fleet owned by Russian cargo line Femco, forcing the vessel to head home.
The Red Cross said yesterday it will try to evacuate hundreds of civilians trapped by fierce fighting in and around the restive city of Homs, as violence killed dozens of people across Syria.
The head of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria, meanwhile, told the UN Security Council of the intensifying violence in the country but said the nearly 300 unarmed monitors were "morally obliged" to stay.
"We are going nowhere," Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said after the closed meeting.
On the political front, Russia resisted Western pleas to help remove Assad from power despite the escalating hostilities that have battered a UN-backed peace initiative.
"We believe that nobody has the right to decide for other nations who should be in power and who should not," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday after a G20 summit in Mexico.
After meeting on Monday, Putin and US President Barack Obama issued a joint call for a cessation to hostilities in Syria, although they failed to frame an immediate plan on ending the bloodshed.
The US State Department said on Wednesday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would meet her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in St. Petersburg next week, as the two sides struggle to find a common stance to end the conflict.
Violence yesterday killed at least 58 people, more than a third of them government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as an activists spoke of a "desperate" situation in and around Homs.
"Every day there are many wounded from the shelling, and we can't do anything for them because we have nothing to treat them with," activist Abu Bilal told AFP in Beirut.
"The shelling is practically constant, and we can't get anybody out of the besieged districts," he added.
Last week the Observatory said more than 1,000 families were stuck in the region around Homs and spoke of dozens of people wounded in urgent need of medical care.
"Electricity has been cut off for four days" in the Old City of Homs and "there's no more flour to bake bread. There really is nothing to eat," said Abu Bilal.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was hoping to evacuate civilians stranded in Homs city and bring in relief aid and medical supplies with the help of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.
EU may slap fresh sanctions on Syria
