Syria's president Bashar al-Assad admitted that ‘some mistakes’ had been made by security forces in a meeting today with a delegation from UN Security Council members Brazil, India and South Africa, said a statement released by the countries.
The deputy foreign ministers from the three emerging powers met Assad and Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem at talks in Damascus to call for an ‘immediate end to all violence’ in Syria, said the statement.
Assad ‘acknowledged that some mistakes had been made by the security forces in the initial stages of the unrest and that efforts were underway to prevent their recurrence,’ said the statement released by India's UN mission.
Rights groups say more than 2,000 people have died in protests since an uprising started in mid-March. More deaths were reported today as the talks went ahead.
The Syrian president ‘reassured the delegation of his commitment to the reform process, aimed at ushering in multi-party democracy,’ said the statement.
‘He said that political reforms were being finalized in consultation with the people of Syria and the national dialogue would continue to give shape to the new laws and to arrive at a suitable model for the economy.’
Assad was quoted as saying that constitutional revisions would be completed by February-March 2012.
Brazil, India and South Africa had been among members of the 15-nation UN Security Council that had resisted efforts by European powers and the United States to agree a council condemnation of the violence.
A statement was passed last week as the violence worsened.
Syrian forces killed 15 civilians in the city of Homs today, an activists' group said, despite international calls for Assad to end the bloody crackdown on protests against his rule.
The United States said the world was watching Syria ‘in horror’ and slapped sanctions on a Syrian bank and mobile phone company.
Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan, who sent his foreign minister to Damascus yesterday to urge an end to the bloodshed, said Syria ‘is pointing guns at its own people’.
State television said the army pulled out of the central city of Hama after a 10-day campaign in a symbolic protest centre in which scores of people were reported killed, and showed footage of troops leaving the northern town of Idlib.
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an armoured force killed at least 15 civilians in an assault on the Bab Amro residential district of Homs this evening.
‘The neighbourhood is witnessing a massacre,’ Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman told Reuters news agency.
Forces deployed in Homs, 165 km north of the capital Damascus three months ago and occupied the main square after large protests demanding an end to 41 years of Assad family rule.
Mr Abdelrahman said two people were also killed in the suburbs of Damascus while a woman was killed earlier when troops and tanks swept into two northern towns near the Turkish border.
Syria has banned independent media from Homs and the rest of Syria, making it difficult to verify events on the ground.
In Deir al-Zor, residents reported heavy gunfire as troops deployed across the eastern city, making arrests, bombarding a mosque and spraying pro-Assad slogans on buildings.
The White House said US president Barack Obama believes Syria would be better off without Assad and the United States plans to keep pressure on the Syrian government.
‘We are all watching with horror at what he is doing to his own people,’ White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Earlier the US Treasury Department announced new sanctions which it said were aimed at the financial infrastructure helping to hold up Assad's government.
It said it was designating the Commercial Bank of Syria, a Syrian state-owned financial institution, and its Lebanon-based subsidiary, Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank, under a presidential executive order that targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters.
It also designated Syriatel, Syria's largest mobile phone operator, under an executive order targeting Syrian officials and others responsible for human rights abuses in the country.
