Pillay told the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly the February 4 veto by Russia and China of a draft Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian burberry outlet online government and endorsing an Arab League plan for Assad to step aside had encouraged Damascus to intensify its attacks.
"The failure of the Security Council to agree on firm collective action appears to have emboldened the Syrian government to launch an all-out assault in an effort to crush dissent with overwhelming force," Pillay said.
"I am particularly appalled by the ongoing onslaught on Homs ... According to credible accounts, the Syrian army has shelled densely populated neighborhoods of Homs in what appears to be an indiscriminate attack on civilian areas."
An Arab League proposal to boost support for the uprising and send in foreign peacekeepers has drawn a guarded response, even as Syrian forces bombarded opposition strongholds.
Homs came under bombardment for a 10th day on Tuesday when Syrian forces resumed shelling hours after Pillay's speech, activists said.
Activist Mohammad al-Homsi said the situation was getting worse. "Army roadblocks are increasing around opposition districts, there is a pattern to the bombardment now. It is heavy in the morning, then gives way to an afternoon lull and resumes at night," Homsi said from the city.
"Shells are falling at random, almost everyone in a residential building in Baba Amro has moved to the ground floor. It is normal to find up to six families living together on the lower levels," activist Hussein Nader said by phone from Homs.
Shelling was also reported in the town of Rastan early on Tuesday. Reports of action on the ground are difficult to verify because Syria restricts access by journalists.
At the United Nations, diplomats said a draft General Assembly resolution which "fully supports" the Arab League plan and introduces a call for the appointment of a cheap burberry bags joint U.N.-Arab League envoy, could be put to a vote later this week.
The resolution, seen by Reuters, is similar to the vetoed Security Council draft, but there are no vetoes in General Assembly votes and its decisions are not legally binding.
"The situation on the ground is unbearable," the Qatari president of the General Assembly, Nassir Abdulaziz al-Nasser, told Al Jazeera Television. "There is an idea for an Arab draft resolution, which I think will be distributed to the member countries today or tomorrow and will be voted on this week."
WEIGHING NEXT MOVE
World powers meanwhile digested Arab League proposals for a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping force for Syria.
The United States and Europe are reluctant to get dragged in militarily. Given Syria's position on the region's religious, ethnic and political faultlines, they fear this would be more risky and complicated than the NATO-led air support that helped Libyan rebels oust Muammar Gaddafi last year.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed in a phone call on Monday on the need for "international unity ... including further action at the UN and a broad and strong coalition in the new Friends of Syria group," Cameron's spokesman said.
The two leaders also "discussed the possibility of increasing the pressure on the Assad regime through additional sanctions," the spokesman added.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Washington that the peacekeeper proposal would be tough to get through given Russian and Chinese support for Damascus.
"There are a lot of challenges to be discussed ... and certainly the peacekeeping request is one that will take agreement and consensus," Clinton said.
Russia, Assad's close ally and main arms supplier, burberry purse said it could not support a peacekeeping mission unless both sides stopped the violence first.
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2012年1月12日星期四
Such action will leave a very
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta cheap burberry bags telephoned Karzai to denounce the actions in the video as "deplorable" and to say it would be investigated immediately, the Pentagon said. General Martin Dempsey, the top U.S. military officer, said actions depicted in the video were illegal.
The U.S. military has identified two of the four Marines in the video so far, a Marine Corps official told Reuters, adding the Marine Corps believed the images were authentic.
But the Pentagon stopped short of offering an official confirmation that the video was real and Panetta said there was not yet a "firm conclusion" on the matter.
The video is likely to stir up already strong anti-U.S. sentiment in Afghanistan after a decade of a war that has seen other cases of abuse. That could complicate efforts to promote reconciliation as foreign troops gradually withdraw.
"Such action will leave a very, very bad impact on peace efforts," Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, told Reuters.
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, seeing a glimmer of hope after months of efforts to broker talks, is launching a fresh round of shuttle diplomacy this weekend.
Marc Grossman, Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, will fly into the region for talks with Karzai and top officials in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
One immediate goal is to seal agreement for the Taliban to open a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar.
Despite concerns when the video emerged cheap scarves for sale that it would not help efforts to build confidence among the warring parties, a Taliban spokesman said although the images were shocking, the tape would not affect talks or a possible prisoner release.
"We know that our country is occupied," he said. "This is not a political process, so the video will not harm our talks and prisoner exchange because they are at the preliminary stage."
CONCERN FOR MORE PROTESTS
Panetta said he had ordered the Marine Corps and the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to investigate and said anyone found responsible will be punished.
"The danger obviously is this kind of video could be misused in many ways not only to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan but undermine the potential for reconciliation. There is a danger there," Panetta told reporters on a trip to Texas.
"But I think if we move quickly - if we conduct this investigation and hold these people accountable - we send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. is not going to tolerate that kind of behavior and it doesn't represent the United States as a whole."
General James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement the video "apparently depicts Marines desecrating several dead Taliban in Afghanistan."
He said he had asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to examine the incident and had set up another internal inquiry headed by Marine officers.
A Marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that all of the Marines in question were believed to be from the 3rd Battallion, 2nd Marines, cheap burberry which is based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, at the time of the incident.
That unit served in Afghanistan from March to September 2011, the official said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of whether President Barack Obama had seen the video.
News of the footage had yet to spread in Afghanistan - a country where a minority has access to electricity and the Internet is limited to a tiny urban elite - but Afghans who were told about what the tape appears to show were horrified.
"It may start with just video footage but it will end with demonstrations around the country and maybe the world," said 44-year-old Qaisullah, who has a shop near Kabul's Shah-e-dushamshera mosque.
Anti-American feeling has boiled over, or been whipped up, into violence several times in Afghanistan in recent years. Protests over reports of the desecration of the Muslim holy book have twice sparked deadly riots.
The tape also sparked anger across the Middle East and in Internet chatrooms, prompting reference to earlier scandals involving U.S. soldiers' treatment of prisoners in Iraq and the killing of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan.
"This is the embodiment of the strong assaulting the weak. It's nothing new for the Americans, it only adds to what they have done in Abu Ghraib prison. This a breach of the sacredness of Islam and Muslims," said Othman al-Busaifi, 45, in Tripoli.
The U.S. military has been prosecuting soldiers from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade on charges of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians while deployed in Kandahar burberry outlet province in 2010 and cutting off body parts as war trophies.
The U.S. military has identified two of the four Marines in the video so far, a Marine Corps official told Reuters, adding the Marine Corps believed the images were authentic.
But the Pentagon stopped short of offering an official confirmation that the video was real and Panetta said there was not yet a "firm conclusion" on the matter.
The video is likely to stir up already strong anti-U.S. sentiment in Afghanistan after a decade of a war that has seen other cases of abuse. That could complicate efforts to promote reconciliation as foreign troops gradually withdraw.
"Such action will leave a very, very bad impact on peace efforts," Arsala Rahmani, a senior member of the Afghan government's High Peace Council, told Reuters.
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, seeing a glimmer of hope after months of efforts to broker talks, is launching a fresh round of shuttle diplomacy this weekend.
Marc Grossman, Obama's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, will fly into the region for talks with Karzai and top officials in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
One immediate goal is to seal agreement for the Taliban to open a political office in the Gulf state of Qatar.
Despite concerns when the video emerged cheap scarves for sale that it would not help efforts to build confidence among the warring parties, a Taliban spokesman said although the images were shocking, the tape would not affect talks or a possible prisoner release.
"We know that our country is occupied," he said. "This is not a political process, so the video will not harm our talks and prisoner exchange because they are at the preliminary stage."
CONCERN FOR MORE PROTESTS
Panetta said he had ordered the Marine Corps and the commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan to investigate and said anyone found responsible will be punished.
"The danger obviously is this kind of video could be misused in many ways not only to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan but undermine the potential for reconciliation. There is a danger there," Panetta told reporters on a trip to Texas.
"But I think if we move quickly - if we conduct this investigation and hold these people accountable - we send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. is not going to tolerate that kind of behavior and it doesn't represent the United States as a whole."
General James Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement the video "apparently depicts Marines desecrating several dead Taliban in Afghanistan."
He said he had asked the Naval Criminal Investigative Service to examine the incident and had set up another internal inquiry headed by Marine officers.
A Marine officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that all of the Marines in question were believed to be from the 3rd Battallion, 2nd Marines, cheap burberry which is based in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, at the time of the incident.
That unit served in Afghanistan from March to September 2011, the official said.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was not aware of whether President Barack Obama had seen the video.
News of the footage had yet to spread in Afghanistan - a country where a minority has access to electricity and the Internet is limited to a tiny urban elite - but Afghans who were told about what the tape appears to show were horrified.
"It may start with just video footage but it will end with demonstrations around the country and maybe the world," said 44-year-old Qaisullah, who has a shop near Kabul's Shah-e-dushamshera mosque.
Anti-American feeling has boiled over, or been whipped up, into violence several times in Afghanistan in recent years. Protests over reports of the desecration of the Muslim holy book have twice sparked deadly riots.
The tape also sparked anger across the Middle East and in Internet chatrooms, prompting reference to earlier scandals involving U.S. soldiers' treatment of prisoners in Iraq and the killing of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan.
"This is the embodiment of the strong assaulting the weak. It's nothing new for the Americans, it only adds to what they have done in Abu Ghraib prison. This a breach of the sacredness of Islam and Muslims," said Othman al-Busaifi, 45, in Tripoli.
The U.S. military has been prosecuting soldiers from the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade on charges of murdering unarmed Afghan civilians while deployed in Kandahar burberry outlet province in 2010 and cutting off body parts as war trophies.
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