Assad sets May 7 as date for parliamentary vote in Syria

Syria’s embattled President Bashar al-Assad issued a decree on Tuesday setting May 7 as the date for parliamentary elections, the state news agency SANA reported.

The announcement came after international mediator Kofi Annan said he would be expecting a response from the embattled Syrian regime on proposals he presented in an effort to halt a year of bloodshed.

“I am expecting to hear from Syrian authorities today since I left some concrete proposals for them to consider,” the United Nations-Arab League envoy had told reporters in Ankara after meeting with the Syrian opposition.

“The Syrian people have gone a lot and they deserve better,” Annan added.

The vote, seen as a response from Assad to Annan’s initiative, forms part of a raft of reforms announced by Assad in a bid to calm a year-long uprising against his regime that began with democracy protests.

The elections would be the third time a legislative vote has taken place in Syria since Assad came to power in 2000.

The last parliamentary poll in 2007 saw the National Progressive Front − a coalition led by Assad’s Baath Party − seize, as expected, the majority of the 250 seats in the assembly.

The May 7 vote was originally set to take place in September but was delayed to allow Assad to carry out reforms in the face of the revolt threatening his regime.

Earlier this week, the former U.N. chief had failed to secure an accord in talks with President Bashar al-Assad aimed at ending the escalating violence that has killed thousands of people since March last year.

“I have made it clear at the beginning of my mission that my main preoccupation is welfare of Syrian people and the Syrian nation. We should put the interest of people at the center of everything we do.

“With goodwill and determination I’m hopeful we will make progress,” Annan added.

The U.N.-Arab League mediator arrived in neighboring Turkey on Monday as the number of Syrians arriving at the border to seek refuge is mounting daily. About 12,500 Syrians who fled their homes are currently in Turkey, according to the latest official figures from Ankara, AFP reported.

Landmines target fleeing Syrians

But Syrian forces are targeting those that are fleeing the country by laying mines near the borders of Lebanon and Turkey along routes used to escape the conflict in Syria, advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday.

Its report documented multiple accounts from witnesses in Turkey, Lebanon and inside Syria who had either seen Syrian troops laying mines or been injured by mines.

“Any use of anti-personnel landmines is unconscionable,” Steve Goose, Arms Division director at HRW, said. “There is absolutely no justification for the use of these indiscriminate weapons by any country, anywhere, for any purpose.”

Syria last used anti-personnel mines during the 1982 conflict with Israel in Lebanon, the report said. Syria’s stockpile is believed to consist mainly of Soviet/Russian-manufactured mines, it added.

HRW called on Syria to immediately cease laying landmines, calling them “military ineffective” weapons that will kill and injure mostly civilians for years to come, according to the BBC news site.

A 15-year-old boy described to the BBC how he lost a leg to a landmine after trying to help a friend of a family, wounded in the government assault on the Baba Amro district of Homs, to cross the border into Lebanon.

“I was less than 50-60m [165-195ft] away from crossing the border when the landmine exploded,” he said, adding that the friend died.

Despite intense international pressure to end the violence and a growing clamor for foreign intervention, Assad’s regime has pushed on with its brutal crackdown on a revolt that has killed more than 8,500 people, the majority civilians, according to activists.

Annan said he had a “useful meeting” in Ankara with Syrian opposition members who “promised their full cooperation which will be necessary if we are going to succeed.”

In separate comments, resistance leader Ghalioun said the opposition’s priority was for a peaceful resolution to the crisis despite a pledge by some countries to provide it with weapons.

“Our main objective is to reach a political and diplomatic solution. But if it fails, those countries will provide arms,” he said in remarks translated from Arabic.

In parliament, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the second “Friends of Syria” conference would take place in Istanbul on April 2, after the first meeting in Tunis on Feb. 24.

Erdogan called on the international community and international organizations to “take sincere steps” for Syria where he said the “honors of mankind is being trampled.”

Turkey, which had been an ally of neighboring Syria, has been increasingly critical of the regime’s crackdown has called for Assad to quit. It is also playing host to opposition groups and an increasing number of refugees fleeing the violence in their homeland.