Russia is seeking to enlist Iran in a bid to engineer a political transition in Syria, a move that drew a hostile U.S. reaction even as the Obama administration asks for more pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The Russian move comes on the heels of reports on al Jazeera television, citing activists, of new massacres by Assad's forces. The reports said at least 140 Syrians were killed, some of them women and children, including 78 in Hama. Syria's state-run SANA news agency said the reports were "baseless" and that terrorists killed nine women and children outside of the city. Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, ordered the city leveled in February 1982 to crush a Sunni Muslim uprising, killing at least 10,000 people.
The possibility of recruiting Iran, one of Assad's main backers, to assist in efforts to end the violence and ease him out of power was floated as Kofi Annan, the architect of a failed United Nations April truce, prepared to address the UN today about ways to revive his peace plan or pursue next steps.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/06/07/bloomberg_articlesM57ROW6S972801-M58P8.DTL#ixzz1x88pDnVh
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