Cameron urges Russia to back UN as Assad intensifies attack

President Bashar Assad is intensifying his assault aimed at crushing army defectors and protesters, even as the West tries to overcome Russian opposition and win a new UN resolution against Syria’s crackdown on the 10-month-old uprising.

Activists reported that at least 28 civilians have been killed.

Prime Minister David Cameron urged Moscow to reconsider its stance.

A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “We believe that the UN must act to support the people of Syria and that Russia can no longer explain blocking the UN and providing cover for the regime’s brutal repression.

“There is hope to agree a UN Security Council resolution this week and to make it very clear to President Assad and his regime that the killing must stop.”

But Russia insists it will not support any resolution that could enable foreign military intervention in Syria. Instead, it said it is seeking to mediate talks in Moscow between Damascus and the opposition.

It said Assad’s government has agreed to participate but the opposition has in the past rejected any negotiations unless violence stops.

The British and French foreign ministers were last night heading to New York for UN talks as they and Arab countries push for a resolution backing an Arab League peace plan which would give international backing to a timetable for the transition of power to a unity government, followed by free elections. Damascus has rejected the proposal.

The Arab League’s secretary general Nabil Elaraby will brief Security Council members, including Foreign Secretary William Hague, on the findings of its recent mission to monitor the Assad regime’s response to the protests. The suspension of the mission at the weekend was followed by an upsurge in violence,

The United Nations estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,400 people have been killed since the uprising began in March. The bloodshed has continued since then – with more than 190 killed in the past five days.

The wide-scale offensive near the capital suggested the regime is worried that military defectors could close in on Damascus, which has remained relatively quiet while most other Syrian cities have slipped into chaos.

In the past two weeks, army dissidents have become more visible, seizing several suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus and setting up checkpoints where masked men wearing military clothing and wielding assault rifles stop motorists and protect anti-regime protests.

Their presence so close to the capital is astonishing in tightly controlled Syria and suggests the Assad regime may either be losing control or setting up a trap for the fighters.

Meanwhile regime forces bombarded the central city of Homs, which has been one of the cities at the forefront of the uprising, leading to further fatalities.

Western powers are pushing for the adoption of the UN resolution tabled by current Security Council member Morocco.

But Russia is resisting a swift vote, saying it wanted to “study the recommendations and conclusions of the observer mission in detail” before moving to a substantive discussion in the Security Council.

Deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov last week signalled that Moscow may wield its veto to block the draft resolution in its current form. In October, Russia and China blocked a Western-backed draft resolution condemning Assad’s government for its crackdown on protesters.