Anti-Assad Protests Damascus – Agencies The draft resolution on Syria to the UN security council calls on Assad to step aside or face \'further measures\' in 15 days\' time. In one of its key passages , the draft reads: \"Delegation by the President of Syria of his full authority to his Deputy to fully cooperate with the national unity government in order to empower it to perform its duties in the transitional period.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government has accused \"armed terrorist groups\" of a number of attacks on gas and oil pipelines since the uprising began. The state news agency, Sana, reported that \"an armed terrorist group at dawn Monday blew up a gas pipeline extending from Homs to Banyas near Al-Rabieh village in Tal Kalakh\".
The Local Coordination Committee claimed that 16 people have been killed during clashes today. The umbrella activist group says nine of the deaths were in the north-west and six in Homs, where 76 people were reported to have been killed on Monday.Moreover, the group of activists says four of those killed in Idlib were army recruits executed for refusing to open fire on protesters.
Anwar Omran, an activist based in Hama, has been reported to call for international help to stop the killing in Syria.The UN draft resolution on Syria has been obtained by news agencies who have said it goes \"out of its way to address Moscow\'s concerns that the vote could open the door to western military intervention, like a similar resolution on Libya last year.\"
The draft said the council is \"reaffirming its strong commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Syria, emphasising the need to resolve the current crisis in Syria peacefully, and stressing that nothing in this resolution compels states to resort to the use of force or the threat of force\".
However, the draft did not explicitly rule out military intervention.
Although it did take a swipe at Russia\'s supply of arms and ammuntion to Syria - by saying it expressed \"grave concern\" over the ongoing bloodshed, and \"the continued transfer of weapons into Syria which fuels the violence and calling on member states to take necessary steps to prevent such flow of arms\".The draft resolution calls on Bashar al-Assad to hand power to his deputy but insists there will be no use of foreign forces in the country, according to AP. It says the Assad regime should immediately put \"an end to all human rights violations and attacks against those exercising their rights to freedom of expression.\"
The text, the drafting of which was led by Morocco, also called on embattled President Bashar al-Assad to to delegate his \"full authority to his deputy\" to allow a national unity government to lead transition to a democratic system.
Assad\'s regime will supposedly have to immediately put \"an end to all human rights violations and attacks against those exercising their rights to freedom of expression.\"
The UN is trying to press Assad to leave office through a Security Council resolution.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé are among the world\'s top diplomats due at the UN Security Council in New York to support an Arab League plan to end the violence in Syria and to try to overcome Russian-led opposition to a UN-backed demand for political change in Damascus.
The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) head Burhan Ghalioun also called on the UN to condemn Assad\'s regime while pleading Moscow to stop supporting Damascus so that the violence could come to an end.
A joint European-Arab resolution earlier won the support of the 10 Security Council member states necessary to force a vote, according to French diplomat, as much of the attention focused on Russia, Assad\'s principal supporter on the world stage, which has until now stoutly opposed the resolution.
Diplomats at the UN said that a vote on the resolution, formally presented by Morocco, was likely by Thursday, after the council considers a report on the Syrian situation by the Arab League secretary general, Nabil Al-Arabi, and the Qatari prime minister, Hamad Bin Jassim, on Tuesday followed by an ambassadors\' meeting on Wednesday aimed at finding a compromise formula acceptable to Russia.
Speaking at an EU meeting in Brussels, UK Prime Minister David Cameron denounced the \"appalling\" violence in Syria, saying the regime had already \"murdered\" more than 5,000 people, including 400 children.
\"Our message is clear, we will stand with the Syrian people,\" he said. \"And it\'s time for all the members of the UN Security Council to live up to their responsibilities instead of shielding those with blood on their hands.\"
 French foreign minister Alan Juppe confirmed western doubts that Russia could be persuaded to back the draft resolution. \"We\'re blocked by a number of countries, mainly Russia, which opposes every resolution (on Syria),\" he told Europe 1 radio. US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said the US was \"willing to go through the process\" of trying to win backing for the proposals. Cameron meanwhile accused Russia of \"shielding those with blood on their hands\".
Deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov said it would not lead to compromise and that pushing for it \"is a path to civil war\".
Moscow, which has threatened to veto the Security Council resolution, views it as a western-backed attempt to open the door to military intervention. The Russian foreign ministry announced on Monday that the Syrian government had accepted an invitation to peace talks, but the SNC told Reuters news agency it had not been asked and would not take part.
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic efforts, said the United States and other Council members would force a veto if the Russians and Chinese resisted. “They can’t continue to defend an unsustainable status quo,” the official said.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday she would join the French and British foreign ministers at the Security Council to press for a clear message of world support for the Syrians.
 “We stand with you,” Clinton told them in a statement.
Clinton said the US would throw its weight behind an Arab-backed condemnation of President Assad’s regime, which she said was brutally blocking the country’s hopes of peacefully transitioning toward democracy. The escalating violence could destabilise Syria’s neighbors in the powder keg that is the Middle East, she warned.
“The status quo is unsustainable,” Clinton said. “The longer the Al-Assad’s regime continues its attacks on the Syrian people and stands in the way of a peaceful transition, the greater the concern that instability will escalate and spill over throughout the region.”
Saudi Arabia on Monday slammed the Syrian government for the rising number of civilian deaths and stressed the need to stop the bloodshed.
The Kingdom’s statement came in the meeting of the Council of Ministers chaired by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah at Yamamah Palace in Riyadh.
The council discussed the recent Arab League decision to end the observers’ task in Syria following the deepening of the crisis in the country, Minister of Social Affairs Yousuf Al-Othaimin, who is also acting minister of culture and information, said in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency after the weekly meeting of the council.
With talks on the resolution due to begin Tuesday, a French official said at least 10 members of the Security Council backed the measure, which includes a UN demand that Al-Assad carry out an Arab League peace plan. The plan requires Al-Assad to hand his powers over to his vice president and allow creation of a unity government within two months. He has rejected the proposal.
Syria\'s foreign ministry however stated they were not surprised by hostile statements from the US because of the West\'s record of \"foolishness and failing experiments\" in the Middle East.
A resolution needs support from at least 10 nations on the 15-member UN Security Council to go to a vote. Russia, along with the US, Britain, China and France, holds veto power.
Moscow insists it won’t support any resolution that could open the door to an eventual foreign military intervention in Syria, the way an Arab-backed UN measure paved the way for NATO airstrikes in Libya. Instead, the Kremlin said Monday it was trying to put together negotiations in Moscow between Damascus and the opposition.
Al-Assad’s government has agreed to participate, it said. The opposition has in the past rejected any negotiations unless violence stops, and there was no immediate word whether any of the multiple groups that make up the anti-Assad camp would attend.
Syrian troops meanwhile are continuing their campaign to violently repress the resistance in the Damascus suburbs.
Government forces have moved into the two remaining eastern suburbs of the capital still in reblel hands, activists say. Activists also claimed that security forces made sweeping arrests in the nearby town of Rankous.
There were also reports of military defectors taking control of Al-Rastan in Homs, after days of intense clashes. The town has been seized by defectors twice before, only to be retaken by Syrian troops.
 The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said \"intense shooting\" was heard in Zamalka and Arbeen as the tanks and troops advanced.
The Syrian activist network, the \"Local Co-ordination Committees\" (LCC), said that eastern Ghouta, which forms part of the Damascus suburbs, was now a \"disaster area\" after four days under siege from government forces. Thousands of troops plus tanks and armoured vehicles have poured into the Damascus suburbs in recent days to retake areas that had fallen into the hands of the guerilla Free Syrian Army (FSA). The LCC also provided the names of 39 people it alleged were killed in eastern Ghouta but said there may be many more. In a statement, they said: \"We call for the declaration of [Eastern Ghouta] as a disaster area and we appeal to the Red Cross and the Red Crescent and all relevent international organisations to go to the area and provide relief.\"
Syrian state news agency, Sana, confirmed reports of the attack reporting that security forces \"killed big numbers of terrorists and caught many others\".
The report claimed the \"armed terrorist groups\" were equipped with US and Israeli made weapons.
The death toll on Monday was estimated in the dozens in a conflict that has lasted 10 months and, according to the United Nations, caused more than 5,400 civilian deaths. Syria’s Interior Ministry said on Monday that it had killed “big numbers of terrorists” in the eastern suburbs, according to the state news agency, and that they were armed with \"US and Israeli weapons.\"
The Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in Syria over the weekend because of the intractability of the fighting, and has called on the Security Council to support a plan in which Al-Assad would transfer power to his vice president and a unity government would be formed to lead the country to new elections.