ISTANBUL ? The United States and more than 60 other countries moved closer on Sunday to direct intervention in the fighting in Syria, with Arab nations pledging $100 million to pay opposition fighters and the Obama administration agreeing to send communications equipment to help rebels organize and evade Syria?s military, according to participants gathered here.
The moves reflected a growing consensus, at least among those who met here this weekend under the rubric ?Friends of Syria,? that mediation efforts by the United Nations peace envoy, Kofi Annan, were failing to halt the violence in Syria and that more forceful action was needed. With Russia and China blocking measures that could open the way for military action by the United Nations, the countries lined up against the government of President Bashar al-Assad have sought to bolster Syria?s beleaguered opposition through means that seemed to stretch the definition of humanitarian assistance.
The offer to provide salaries and communications equipment to rebel fighters known as the Free Syrian Army ? with the hopes that the money might encourage government soldiers to defect, officials said ? is bringing the loose Friends of Syria coalition to the edge of a proxy war against Mr. Assad?s government and its international supporters, principally Iran and Russia.
Direct assistance to the rebel fighters, even as Mr. Assad?s loyalists press on with a brutal crackdown, risked worsening a conflict that has already led to about 9,000 deaths and could plunge Syria into a protracted civil war.
?We would like to see a stronger Free Syrian Army,? Burhan Ghalioun, the leader of the Syrian National Council, a loose affiliation of exiled opposition leaders, told hundreds of world leaders and other officials gathered here. ?All of these responsibilities should be borne by the international community.?
Mr. Ghalioun did not directly address the financial assistance from the Arab countries ? including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates ? but he added, ?This is high noon for action.?
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the conference that Mr. Assad had defied Mr. Annan?s efforts to broker an end to the fighting and begin a political transition. She said that new assaults began in Idlib and Aleppo provinces even after Mr. Assad publicly accepted the plan a week ago, which called for an immediate cease-fire followed by negotiations with the opposition.
?The world must judge Assad by what he does, not by what he says,? Mrs. Clinton said in a statement to officials who sat around an enormous rectangular table the size of a basketball arena. ?And we cannot sit back and wait any longer.?�
The question of arming the rebels ? as countries like Saudi Arabia and some members of Congress have called for ? remain divisive because of the uncertainty of who exactly would receive them. Paying salaries to fighters blurs the line between lethal and nonlethal support.
Molham Al Drobi, a member of the Syrian National Council, said that the opposition had pledges of $176 million in humanitarian assistance and $100 million in salaries over three months for the fighters inside Syria. He said some money was already flowing into the fighters, including $500,000 last week through ?a mechanism that I cannot disclose now.?
He expressed dismay that the international community was not doing more to provide weapons that might even the odds against the Syrian government?s security forces. ?Our people are killed in the streets,? he said on the sidelines of the conference. ?If the international community prefers not to do it themselves, they should at least help us doing it by giving us the green light, by providing us the arms, or anything else that needs to be done.?
Even so, as the fighting in Syria drags into a second year, the international involvement on behalf of Syria?s rebels ? inside and outside the country ? appears to be deepening.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0332529a164d5bc07403428d558c2505
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