President Assad to address Syrian parliament today

Beirut: President Bashar Assad is expected to give a speech in front of the country’s parliament Sunday, Syrian TV said, a rare public appearance as Damascus confronts rising international condemnation over its crackdown on the 15-month uprising. Assad’s last speech was on 10 January. His address expected at midday will be the first since the massacre in Syria’s central region of Houla that killed more than a 100 people, nearly half of them children, triggering international outrage and the expulsion of Syrian diplomats from world capitals. The opposition and the government have exchanged accusations over the massacre, each blaming the other. UN investigators have said there are strong suspicions that pro-regime gunmen are responsible for at least some of the killings. Activists say as many as 13,000 people have died in the violence. One year after the revolt began, the UN put the toll at 9,000, but hundreds more have died since. [caption id=“attachment_330575” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“President Bashar Assad in this file photo. AP”]  [/caption] Syria has long faced international isolation, but the Houla massacre has brought a new urgency to calls to end the crisis. A cease-fire plan brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan is violated by both sides every day. Fears also have risen that the violence could spread and provoke a regional conflagration. Already clashes have broken out between pro- and anti-Syrian groups in northern Lebanon, with at least eight people killed late Friday and early Saturday, Lebanese security officials said. With violence continuing despite nearly 300-strong UN observers on the ground in Syria, League chief Nabil Elaraby suggested Saturday that the monitors’ mission shift into a peacekeeping one. “What is needed today is not only observing and investigating but supervising that the violence stops,” Elaraby told a meeting of Arab League foreign ministers in Qatar. “One of the alternatives could be amending the authorization regarding the observers so that they become a peacekeeping force.” Annan, who has been trying to salvage his six-point peace plan, warned that “the specter of all-out civil war, with a worrying sectarian dimension, grows by the day,” in Syria, and added that the crisis is spilling over to neighboring countries, an apparent reference to Lebanon. Washington has reached out to Syria’s most important ally and protector, urging Russia to join a coordinated effort to resolve the deadly conflict. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton discussed the situation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in a telephone call on Saturday, a senior State Department official said. “They both agreed that we have to work together,” said the official, who provided details of the private discussion on condition of anonymity. “Her message to him was that we have to start working together to help Syrians with a serious political transition strategy.” Clinton said U.S. and Russian officials should engage diplomatically to come up with ideas in Moscow, Washington, New York and “wherever we need to,” according to the official." Russia has refused to support any move that could lead to foreign intervention in Syria, Moscow’s last significant ally in the Middle East. Russia, along with China, has twice used its veto power to shield Syria from UN sanctions. Associated Press