Syria fighter pilot defects in new blow to Assad

A Syrian pilot sought political asylum after landing his MiG fighter jet in neighbouring Jordan on Thursday, in the first such defection of a revolt a watchdog says has killed more than 15,000 people.

"The pilot asked for political asylum in Jordan," Information Minister Samih Maayatah told AFP, after a government official said the MiG-21 had made an emergency landing at a base in Mafraq in northern Jordan, near Syria.

Syria's state television said the warplane, flown by Colonel Hassan Merei al-Hamade, was flying near the border when contact was lost around 0734 GMT, and Jordan said it landed across the frontier minutes later.

Tens of thousands of soldiers have defected from Syria's armed forces since a revolt erupted in March last year, thousands of them joining the rebel Free Syrian Army, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Diplomats stepped up efforts to stem the bloodshed, with Arab states demanding that Russia stop supplying arms to Syria and the United States and Britain reportedly working on a power transition plan.

"Any assistance to violence must be ceased because when you supply military equipment, you help kill people. This must stop," Arab League deputy chief Ahmed Ben Hilli told Interfax news agency.

Ben Hilli also called for the mandate of United Nations and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to be revamped, and for Iran's inclusion in talks on ending the conflict.

"To make (the Annan) plan work, we need to find a new mechanism and the mandate of the special envoy must be reassessed, so we can be sure that all the sides are observing the plan," he said without elaborating.

His remarks came as British newspaper The Guardian reported that Washington and London were working on an initiative for regime change in Damascus based on Annan's UN-backed plan that calls for a "Syrian-led political transition."

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said any peace plan for Syria that calls on President Bashar al-Assad to leave power and go into exile would not work because he would not quit.

"A scheme according to which President Assad should leave somewhere before something happens in terms of a cessation of violence and a political process, this scheme simply does not work from the very start," Lavrov said.

"It is infeasible because he will not leave."

Lavrov, whose country remains in close contact with Assad's government, indicated that the Syrian leader was not ready to negotiate his removal from power because he still enjoyed popular support.

"I do not think Assad will be sitting down at the negotiating table," said Lavrov, adding that May 7 legislative polls showed a majority still backed the Syrian leader.

Robert Ford, the US ambassador to Syria, called on Syria's military, from foot soldiers to senior officers, to reconsider their support for Assad, warning those committing atrocities will be hunted down and prosecuted.

The US and global community "will work with the Syrian people to locate the military members responsible for this violence and hold them accountable. And we will support the future Syrian government?s efforts to bring those people to justice," Ford said in a message on his Facebook page.

In the latest bloodshed, at least 77 people were killed in violence across Syria on Thursday, among them 49 civilians, 26 soldiers, and two rebels, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

At least 13 civilians were killed in the flashpoint central city of Homs and another two unidentified people died in nearby Quasyr, the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

Streaming video from Homs on the bambuser.com website showed smoke billowing from a residential district as the staccato of automatic gunfire was punctuated by the thud of mortar blasts.

Elsewhere, eight soldiers and a rebel were killed in heavy fighting at Armanaz, near Turkey in the northwestern province of Idlib, following a rebel attack on an army barracks, said the Observatory.

In the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the uprising, at least 18 people were killed as the town of Inkhel was shelled and stormed by troops who then carried out a series of raids.

"If the international community remains silent and happy to just observe the situation, more blood will flow in Syria," the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

"The violence has only become worse in the past two months, and will become more bitter," he added.

According to a new toll given on Thursday, the Observatory said at least 10,480 civilians, 3,715 soldiers and 830 army defectors have been killed in the crackdown and in clashes since March last year.

The fresh bloodshed has halted a planned evacuation of hundreds of stranded civilians from the Homs area by the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

"Negotiations are still underway with the parties concerned to evacuate civilians, in cooperation with the ICRC," Khaled Erksoussi, the Red Crescent operations chief in Syria, told AFP.

"The teams on site are awaiting the green light to evacuate civilians from the parties who control the dangerous neighbourhood. We need to reach an agreement with them to ensure our security," he said, referring to the rebels.

The Red Cross said it made a request for a temporary halt in fighting on Tuesday to the government and opposition, both of which said they would respect the pause.

Last week the Observatory said more than 1,000 families were stuck in the region around Homs and spoke of dozens of people wounded in urgent need of medical care.

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