Members of Kuwaiti parliament overwhelmingly approved a resolution on Wednesday calling on the government to recognize the opposition Syrian National Council as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people. The move by the Kuwaiti MPs came as Syrian troops advanced Wednesday on a key rebel-held area in the central city of Homs, where three Western journalists are among 100,000 residents trapped by a government assault that has raged for weeks. The forces appeared to be starting a ground operation to retake the area that has become a symbol of the uprising to oust President Bashar Al-Assad. Forty-four members, including all cabinet ministers present voted, in favor of the non-binding resolution, while five MPs opposed it. The motion noted that the “Syrian people are facing bloody massacres at the hands of the brutal Baathist regime of Bashar Al-Assad.” “This is a butcher regime that is killing its own people and has lost its legitimacy,” opposition MP Mussallam Al-Barrak said. Thirty-three MPs also filed a motion calling to debate the Syrian issue on Thursday with the aim of calling for “moral and material support” for the Syrian people. Last week, five opposition MPs, including parliament speaker Ahmad Al-Saadun, submitted a bill calling for the scrapping of all economic cooperation agreements with Syria.The bill would also require the government to cancel a host of agreements, sever diplomatic ties with Damascus and ban all loans to Syria. Government forces have been heavily shelling Homs, and particularly the rebel-controlled Baba Amr neighborhood, for more than three weeks with tanks, artillery and rockets. The announcement by a Syrian official of the new troop advance indicated a ground assault was beginning to recapture Baba Amr, home to about 100,000 people. A Syrian official vowed Baba Amr would be “cleaned” within hours. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The UN warned Tuesday that Syria's conflict looks increasingly like a civil war. In Geneva, Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy for Syria, said he would hold talks in New York from Wednesday with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and member states on Syria. Annan, in a statement, said he would hold a series of consultations in New York through Friday and then depart for Cairo to meet Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby.
