Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will visit Syria soon to try to persuade Bashar al-Assad's government to call an immediate ceasefire in an 18-month-old conflict with rebels, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Brahimi is to meet Assad as fighting rages in Syria's biggest city Aleppo and government forces pursue offensives to dislodge rebels from provincial bastions elsewhere, causing increasing spillover into neighboring countries especially Turkey, prompting Ban to warn against the danger of escalation, Reuters reported.

Tensions rose after the shelling of a Turkish border town last week, which resulted in the death of five civilians and Turkey's attacking targets inside Syria in response.

Turkey has bolstered its military presence along the 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria and responded in kind to gunfire and shelling coming from the south, where Assad's forces have been battling insurgents holding swathes of territory.

Furthermore, UN chief said Brahimi aimed to curb the bloodshed and negotiate a deal to allow more humanitarian aid into Syria, where a civilian protest movement has evolved into an armed insurgency and one million people have been driven from their homes.

Ban noted he was discussing how to provide assurances to both rebels and the government in talks with the U.N. Security Council and countries in the region. "I am getting positive support from the key countries," he said.

He repeated a call for those countries providing weapons to both sides to stop. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have backed the rebels, while Assad's main allies are Iran and Russia.

"First and foremost, the violence must be stopped as soon as possible," Ban said. Diplomats said Brahimi would first visit Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, all regional diplomatic heavyweights, for consultations before heading to Damascus.

Brahimi's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi later clarified that Brahimi's initial swing through other countries meant his trip to Syria would not happen this week. He declined to give details of Brahimi's itinerary for security reasons.

In September, his first month on the job, Brahimi met with Assad in Damascus and visited Syrian refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan. The U.N. envoy said afterwards that he had a "few ideas" but no full plan on how to defuse the conflict, which he described as "extremely bad and getting worse".

Warning

On Monday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul warned that "worst case scenarios" were playing out in Syria as Turkey's army fired shells over the border for the sixth day running in response to shelling from the Syrian side. Northern Syria near the Turkish border has seen heavy fighting in the civil war.

As the Turkish military retaliated with artillery fire for a sixth straight day on Monday after a Syrian shell hit its territory, Turkey has accelerated its diplomatic efforts to find a non-military solution to the deteriorating crisis with Syria.

Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu has discussed Syria with his U.S. and Chinese counterparts amid escalating tensions and cross-border attacks on the Syrian-Turkish border, Todays Zaman newspaper reported.

The U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton expressed her concerns over intermittent artillery shelling across the Turkish-Syrian border, the sources added. Clinton told Davutoglu that the US backs Turkish moves taken regarding the recent crisis with Syria within the scope of NATO.

Davutoglu also discussed Syrian artillery shelling of southern Turkish district of Akcakale on the Syrian border with his Chinese counterpart, Jang Jiechi.