Oil minister highest official to defect to rebel ranks

Syria’s deputy oil minister Syria’s deputy oil minister The leader of the Syrian Free Army has rejected attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Speaking to the Arab magazine the Majalla, Colonel Riad Al-Asaad said: "The Syrian people will not accept any form of dialogue with this criminal regime. The Syrian people want to bring this regime down and will never give it another chance". Asaad also denied that the SNC had made contact with the US, but he welcomed verbal backing given by Arab countries.
Earlier on Thursday, Syria’s deputy oil minister resigned on Thursday, becoming the most senior official to join the rebel ranks, as Washington revealed it was mulling giving non-lethal aid to the insurgency. Abdo Hussameddin announced his resignation in a video posted by activists on YouTube saying he was joining the revolt.
“I, the engineer Abdo Hussameddin, the deputy oil minister ... announce my defection from the regime and my resignation,” he said in the video.
“I am joining the revolution of the people who reject injustice and the brutal campaign of the regime, which is seeking to crush the people's demand for freedom and dignity,” he added.
Hussameddin said he had served in the Syrian government for 33 years and did not wish to end his life “serving a criminal regime.”
Hussameddin becomes the highest-ranking Syrian official to resign from the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, who has been battling a year-long revolt.
In his video comments, Hussameddin denounced Russia and China for backing the Syrian regime saying they were not "friends of the Syrian people but partners in the killing of the Syrian people".
He advised his colleagues to abandon "this sinking ship".
Rami, an activist who shot the video of the defecting Hussameddin and posted it on YouTube, told AFP in Beirut that the opposition helped arrange his resignation.
He asked that the location where the video was shot not be disclosed for safety reasons.
Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said the envoy also promoted mediation between the Syrian government and opposition groups.
The trip by envoy Li Huaxin appears to be the latest initiative to counter accusations from Western and Arab governments that China, along with Russia, abetted expanding violence by Assad's forces by vetoing two UN resolutions aimed at pressuring him out of office.
A team from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) entered the district of Baba Amr in Homs on Wednesday. The SARC volunteers found that the vast majority of Baba Amr residents had left their homes in recent days to seek refuge in neighbouring areas, where the SARC and the ICRC are providing them with assistance.
The priority now is to continue providing food, blankets and hygiene kits for people in areas affected by the violence, including those who have had to leave Baba Amr.
In Abel (10 km from Homs), 450 families received food and hygiene kits today, and the SARC and the ICRC are continuing their daily distributions of food and other essential items in Hama, Idlib, Dara’a and rural Damascus.
UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan is hoping to get the chance on Saturday to see how far the country has sunk.
The former UN chief was in Cairo on Wednesday ahead of his first visit since his appointment as international envoy for Syria.
Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki renewed an offer of asylum to Assad in an interview to be shown Thursday, after Russia said there was no question of it granting the Syrian leader refuge.
Meanwhile Russia's UN envoy on Wednesday accused Libya of helping to train Syrian rebels to carry out attacks on Damascus government targets.
"We have received information that there is in Libya, with the support of the authorities, a special training center for Syrian revolutionaries and these people are sent to Syria to attack the legal government," ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.
The news of the ministerial resignation came hours after US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Washington was looking at delivering non-lethal aid to Syria’s rebels, hinting at the first direct US assistance to the forces seeking Assad’s downfall.
While outraged at the killing of civilians in Syria, the US government is opposed to taking unilateral military action and favors pursuing diplomacy to force Assad to step down, Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“We are reviewing all possible additional steps that can be taken with our international partners to support efforts to protect the Syrian people, end the violence and ensure regional stability, including potential military options if necessary,” Panetta stressed.
Asked by Senator Richard Blumenthal if the United States was ready to deliver communications equipment to Syrian rebels, Panetta said: “I’d prefer to discuss that in a closed session but I can tell you that we're considering an array of non-lethal assistance.”
Meanwhile, Russia is still not flinching in the face of Western and Arab pressure to change its stance on the Syria conflict and its defiance may yet increase as Vladimir Putin heads back to the Kremlin.
Western powers have queued up to tell Putin it is high time, after his resounding election victory, for Moscow to start exerting pressure on Assad’s regime and support sanctions over the bloody opposition crackdown.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is also heading to Cairo on Saturday for crunch talks with foreign ministers of Arab countries who have been bitterly critical of Russia’s intransigence.
The Russian foreign ministry has already sternly warned the West not to indulge in “wishful thinking” by expecting its position to change after the election and saying its policy was not determined by “electoral cycles.”
According to the United Nations, more than 7500 people have died in the brutal government crackdown to put down the revolt that erupted last March.
On Wednesday, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos briefly visited the battered neighbourhood of Baba Amr, in the protest city of Homs, with a Syrian Red Crescent team.
However Amos was stopped from going into areas of Homs still held by the opposition, despite receiving assurances from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in earlier talks that she could go to any part of the country, her spokeswoman Amanda Pitt told AFP.
"She says that the parts they saw were completely devastated," Pitt told AFP. "She said Homs feels like a city that has been completely closed down.
The Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross had been trying since last Friday to enter Baba Amr -- the target of a month-long bombardment to oust rebel fighters -- but the government repeatedly barred them from evacuating wounded civilians and delivering desperately needed supplies.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 27 people were killed in violence across Syria on Wednesday alone, 10 of them in the central Homs province.
In Hama province, also central, seven members of one family were said to have died during shooting and shelling in the town of Shayzar.
The London-based observatory said the death toll also included seven army defectors.