Syrian opposition slams Annan's calls for dialogue

UN and Arab League special envoy on Syria Kofi Annan Syrian activists voiced growing fears on Friday of a major assault like the one that devastated the Homs neighbourhood of Baba Amr, on the eve of a first visit by new international envoy Kofi Annan. Troop reinforcements backed by tanks were massing in the northwestern province of Idlib, close to the Turkish border, in a bid to root out rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army, activists and a human rights watchdog said.
Ahead of his Saturday departure for Damascus, former UN chief Annan spoke out strongly against any foreign arming of the rebels, prompting Washington to echo his concerns about the dangers of further militarisation of the conflict.
The activist group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, said 20 people have been killed in Syria so far on Friday, including two women and two children. The Committee said 11 have been killed in Homs, three each in Hama and Idlib and one in each of Damascus, Deraa and Aleppo, The Guardian liveblog reported.
Late on Thursday, AP has published fuller quotes from its interview with Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the opposition Syrian Transitional National Council (STNC), in which he rejected Kofi Annan's call for dialogue with the government. Annan also expressed his hope "that no one is thinking very seriously of using force in this situation".
Ghalioun said: “This kind of comments are disappointing and do not give a lot of hope for people in Syria being massacred every day. It feels like we are watching the same movie being repeated over and over again.”
“Any political solution will not succeed if it is not accompanied by military pressure on the regime,” he added.
Syrian ally Moscow hit out at a new US-led push at the UN Security Council for action on the crisis, describing a recently circulated draft resolution as "unbalanced" because it does not call for a simultaneous halt to violence by the government and the rebels.
Armoured units were deploying heavily around Idlib province's Jabal al-Zawiya hill district, where rebel fighters have been active, said Milad Fadl, a member of the opposition Syrian Revolution General Commission.
"Large numbers of residents from eight villages in that area have fled," Fadl told AFP, adding that people were also leaving the city of Idlib itself.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army had launched an assault Friday on four villages in the province and was hunting down rebels in the area.
There are concerns that Idlib could suffer the same fate as the Baba Amr neighbourhood of the central city of Homs, which was stormed by government troops on March 1 after a month of shelling.
Early on Friday, security force gunfire killed one civilian in the Damascus neighbourhood of Kafar Soussa, it added.
Speaking in Cairo, Annan urged "the Syrian opposition to come together to work with us to find a solution that will respect the aspirations of the Syrian people."
He warned against further militarisation of the crisis, amid a groundswell of international support for arming the rebels. The mostly army defectors who make up the Free Syrian Army are heavily outgunned by the regime forces they are battling in a number of flashpoint areas, including Idlib.
"I believe further militarisation will make the situation worse," Annan said after talks with Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi.
 "I hope that no one is very seriously thinking of using force in this situation."
Washington, which had previously revealed it was looking at the possibility of providing "non-lethal" aid to the rebels, echoed his warning about the dangers of further militarisation.
"We have made very clear that we do not believe that it is right at this time to contribute to the further militarisation of the situation in Syria," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told lawmakers that Washington was considering providing non-lethal aid to rebels in what would be the first direct US assistance to forces seeking Assad's downfall.
"We're considering an array of non-lethal assistance," Panetta said.
Regarding the new UN draft resolution on the crisis, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said "we cannot agree with the draft resolution in the form it is being presented in today. The text of the resolution under discussion is unbalanced."
Gatilov, quoted by Interfax news agency, said Russia was receiving reports that the UN Security Council intended to put the resolution up for a vote on Monday.
"It is unacceptable to tie the adoption of any text with a deadline. The time factor is not the most important thing."
Along with China, Russia vetoed two previous UN Security Council drafts on the year-long crisis, and Gatilov strongly urged world powers not to rush ahead with the vote.
China said on Friday it was sending an envoy to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and France to explain its position on the conflict.
Meanwhile, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos arrived in Turkey on Friday, after her trip to Syria, to visit camps set up for thousands of Syrians who have fled the conflict across the border, a UN official in Ankara told Reuters.
Some 12,000 Syrians are registered at the camps set up to provide refuge for them in Turkey's southern province of Hatay, after the arrival of around 800 during the past week, according to a foreign ministry official.
Meanwhile, protests are being held in Syria to commemorate the 2004 Kurdish uprising in Qamishli when about 30 people were killed.