WarSclerotic

As rebel fighters yesterday pushed deeper into Damascus, the heart of President Bashar al-Assad’s power base, talks on Syria’s future headed toward a showdown at the United Nations with a vote this week on sanctioning the regime.

Assad, fighting for the survival of his Alawite clan’s four-decade hold on power, has been unable to suppress a revolt that’s escalated over 18 months into an armed insurgency pitting the majority Sunni Muslims against his Alawite leadership.

Russia, a Soviet-era ally of Syria, has shielded Assad until now from international action by using its veto at the Security Council. That allegiance will be tested again as soon as today in a vote threatening sanctions in 10 days if Assad doesn’t comply with a UN peace plan he’s flouted for five months. During that time, violence has intensified as the country has plummeted into what the International Red Cross now calls a civil war.

“This is the last chance for the council to act responsibly, and we are seeking other options outside,” said Bassma Kodmani, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, at a news conference yesterday in New York. No one wants military intervention, such as NATO’s bombing of Libya, “not even us,” she said.

Three Strikes

In New York, diplomats have been trying to persuade Russia, which twice has blocked measures against its longtime ally, not to use its veto a third time. A Western-drafted resolution seeks to punish Assad’s violence against opponents by imposing non- military measures such as an arms embargo and asset freezes.

UN envoy Kofi Annan, a former UN secretary-general whose efforts to end the conflict in Syria have foundered, met yesterday in Moscow with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“I don’t see any reason we can’t reach an agreement based on similar principles in the Security Council,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow.

At stake for Russia is its last toehold in the Arab world. Syria is an arms customer and hosts Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union in the port of Tartus. Since returning to power, Putin also has presented a more assertive foreign policy.

While Russia re-submitted an amended version of its resolution, it calls only for a rollover of a UN monitor mission without adding any pressure to hold Assad accountable for human- rights abuses, according to Western diplomats who all spoke on condition of the anonymity because the text isn’t public.

Little Hope

In New York yesterday, there was little hope of a breakthrough, and as the debate at the UN drags on, Assad’s fate seems more likely to be decided on the Syrian streets.

“Even if Russia doesn’t use its veto, is there a workable outcome if he leaves?” said Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, in a telephone interview. “This is going to play out bloodily on the battleground. It’s difficult to imagine a brokered scenario where the Alawites give up and one that the Sunnis accept.”

The Free Syrian Army battled security forces in Damascus for a fourth straight day. Syrian security forces killed at least 43 people yesterday in the capital, the Syrian Revolution General Commission, an opposition group, said on its website.

Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s largest cities, have been spared the worst of the violence until recently, as government forces mounted fierce attacks on opponents in predominantly Sunni provinces such as Homs and Hama.

Closing In

The two cities are home to merchants and wealthy Assad supporters who have benefited from their ties to the regime. In recent weeks, though, clashes in the suburbs of Damascus have encroached on the capital.

“There are organized military units who are testing the regime in and around Damascus,” Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, said in an interview yesterday from Cairo. “I suspect this is now going to be a continuing,intensifying battle in Damascus. The regime having to use heavy armor in the environment of Damascus tells you how much trouble it’s in.”

The UN efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria could be headed to a dead end if Russia keeps its promise to veto sanctions and the three-month UN monitoring mission, which has failed to quell the violence, is allowed to expire on July 20.