(Adds Chinese vice foreign minister, pipeline blast)
* Troops bombard Hama, continue attack on Homs
* France sets up emergency fund for aid agencies
* Arabs prepare new UN resolution
* Obama tells Chinese leader 'disappointed' at Chinese veto
AMMAN, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Syrian government forces
launched an offensive on the city of Hama early on Wednesday,
firing on residential neighbourhoods from armoured vehicles and
mobile anti-aircraft guns, opposition activists said.
Troops also shelled Sunni Muslim neighbourhoods in Homs,
the 13th day of their bombardment of a city that has been at the
forefront of the uprising against 42 years of rule by President
Bashar al-Assad and his late father Hafez.
An explosion hit a major oil pipeline feeding a refinery in
Homs, sending a large plume of smoke rising into the sky,
witnesses said. The blast hit the pipeline near a district being
shelled by government troops, they said.
France said it had created a one million euro emergency
fund for aid agencies looking to help the Syrian people and
would propose a similar one at an international level next week
at a meeting in Tunisia to discuss the escalating crisis.
Paris had previously proposed "humanitarian corridors" with
Syrian approval or with an international mandate for shipping
food and medicine to alleviate civilian suffering.
Tanks deployed near the citadel of Hama were shelling the
neighbourhoods of Faraya, Olailat, Bashoura and al-Hamidiya, and
troops were advancing from the airport, opposition sources said.
An activist called Amer, speaking briefly by satellite
phone, said that "landlines and mobile phone networks have been
cut in the whole of Hama," a Sunni city notorious for the
massacre of some 10,000 people when the present president's
father Hafez sent in troops to crush an uprising there in 1982.
Activists said no casualty reports were available from Hama,
Syria's fourth largest city, because of communications problems.
Assad's determination to crush the revolt, regardless of
widespread condemnation of his use of force against civilians,
prompted Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia to prepare a new
resolution at the United Nations in support of a peace plan
forged at a meeting in Cairo on Sunday.
A resolution passed at the meeting urged Arabs to "provide
all kinds of political and material support" to the opposition.
This included arms transfers, Arab League diplomats told
|Reuters.
"We will back the opposition financially and diplomatically
in the beginning but if the killing by the regime continues,
civilians must be helped to protect themselves. The resolution
gives Arab states all options to protect the Syrian people," an
Arab ambassador said in Cairo.
The head of Egypt's influential seat of Sunni Islamic
learning, al-Azhar, called on Tuesday for bold Arab action
against the Syrian government, raising regional pressure on
Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of
Shi'ite Islam, that has dominated Syria for five decades.
The threat of military support was meant to add pressure on
the Syrian leader and his Russian and Chinese allies but it also
risks leading to a Libya-style conflict or sectarian civil war.
Russia and China on Feb. 4 vetoed a Western-Arab U.N.
Security Council resolution that backed an Arab League call for
Assad to step aside as part of efforts to end the bloodshed.
U.S. President Barack Obama told Chinese Vice President Xi
Jinping on Tuesday, at a meeting at the White House, that the
United States was disappointed with China's veto, an
administration official said.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai told reporters
after the talks that China still supported the role of the Arab
League and wanted "inclusive dialogue" to end the violence.
But he said the Security Council needed to take a "very
careful and very responsible attitude" to Syria, adding that
"If the U.N. Security Council takes the wrong steps, that could
lead to even worse bloodshed." He did not amplify his remarks.
Smuggled guns are already reaching Syria but it is not clear
if Arab or other governments are behind the deliveries. Weapons
and Sunni Muslim insurgents are also crossing into Syria from
Iraq, Iraqi officials and arms dealers said.
Assad dismisses his opponents as terrorists backed by enemy
nations in a regional power-play and says he will introduce
reforms on his own terms.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported 20 people
killed across Syria on Tuesday, including opposition supporters,
civilians, and five government soldiers shot in clashes with
rebel fighters in Qalaat al-Madyaq town near Hama.
Rallies by civilians, defying the crackdown, are one part of
the uprising, but armed insurrection by the Free Syrian Army,
mainly army defectors, is increasingly coming into play.
The government says at least 2,000 members of its military
and security forces have died and the United Nations says
government forces have killed several thousand civilians.
In Homs, a strategic city on the highway between Damascus
and the commercial hub Aleppo, the pro-opposition district of
Baba Amro was struck by shelling on Wednesday, activists said.
At least six people were killed there on Tuesday, taking the
city's estimated toll above 400 since the assault began on Feb.3
Foreign media have to rely on unverified activists' accounts
because the Syrian government restricts access. But reports from
neutral international organisations confirm a general picture of
widespread violence.
An Arab League proposal that a joint Arab-U.N. peacekeeping
mission be sent to Syria elicited a guarded response from
Western powers, who are wary of becoming bogged down militarily
in Syria. It was rejected out of hand by the Assad government.
Russia, Assad's main ally and arms supplier, also showed
little enthusiasm, saying it could not support a peacekeeping
mission unless both sides stopped the violence first.
The Syria conflict, one of a series of revolts in the Arab
world which saw the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya toppled
last year, is shaping up to be a geopolitical struggle
reminiscent of the Cold War.
Russia wants to retain its foothold in the region and
counter U.S. influence. Assad is also allied to regional Shi'ite
power Iran, which is at odds with the United States, Europe and
Israel.
(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair, Yasmine Saleh and Ayamn
Samir in Cairo, Erika Solomon and in Beirut, and Louis
Charbonneau at the United Nations; editing by Tim Pearce)
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