Syrian troops closed public squares in Hama on Thursday after residents poured red paint symbolising blood on the ground to mark the 30th anniversary of the massacre President Bashar al-Assad's father carried out to crush an uprising. Assad has been locked in struggle with a revolt against his own rule for the past 11 months, with at least 5,000 killed, by a United Nations count, stirring Arab and Western calls for international action to stop the bloodshed.
But Russia warned it would veto any UN resolution on Syria it deemed "unacceptable", making clear it aimed to prevent a Libyan-style intervention over Assad's violent crackdown on mass protests that have turned to armed insurgency in some regions. Opposition activists say Assad's forces have stepped up operations around the country after appearing to crush rebels who brought the fight to the outskirts of the capital, Damascus earlier this week.
Activists in Hama said fire trucks washed away dye and paint poured on the ground overnight to commemorate the bloodshed of Hafez al-Assad's 1982 assault on the city - centre of an Islamist revolt against him - at the cost of over 10,000 lives. "They want to kill the memory and they do not want us to remember," said an activist in the city, where residents said tanks blocked main squares to prevent demonstrations. "But we will not accept it." Residents said snipers took up positions in the city subsequently.
Hama marked the anniversary of the massacre as Russia fended off attempts to mobilise the United Nations against Syria. Russia, which has been a key strategic ally of Syria during its 49 years under Assad dynastic rule and a major arms supplier to Damascus, is demanding any UN resolution explicitly rule out foreign intervention or it would be "unacceptable".
A draft UN Security Council resolution backed by Western powers and based on an Arab League peace plan for Syria calls on Assad to hand powers to a deputy, but this has been rebuffed by Damascus as interference in its sovereignty and is opposed by Moscow as a recipe for regime change.
Russia and China, both veto-wielding Security Council members, stand in the way of a Western push for a resolution condemning the Syrian government's crackdown on unrest. Security Council ambassadors met in New York on Wednesday to discuss ways to overcome their disagreements on the wording of the European-Arab draft resolution that Morocco submitted to council members on Friday.
The closed-door negotiations ended without a final agreement and will resume on Thursday, Germany's UN mission said. The draft will be updated to reflect Wednesday's discussions, which the mission said were "rather constructive". A council diplomat at the meeting told Reuters, however, that Russia's envoy Vitaly Churkin reiterated to council members that the expression of full support for the Arab League plan in the current draft was "unacceptable".
He also made clear Moscow could not accept the expression of concern in the draft about arms sales to Syria unless there was a waiver for weapons transfers to the Syrian government, the diplomat said. "It's way too soon in my judgement to know whether ultimately there will be agreement," the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, told reporters. "It's long past time for this council to take meaningful action," she said. Despite the Russian comments, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said a "window of hope" had opened, and vowed redoubled efforts to agree a text "in the next few days".