Russia won a promise from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday to bring an end to bloodshed in Syria, but Western and Arab states acted to isolate Assad further after activists and rebels said his forces killed over 100 in the city of Homs.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, representing a rare ally on a trip to the Syrian capital other states are shunning, said Russia now wanted to resolve Syria's crisis in line with an Arab plan Moscow and Beijing vetoed in the UN Security Council.
The Russian mediation failed to slow a rush by countries that denounced the Russian-Chinese veto three days ago to corner Syria diplomatically and cripple Assad with sanctions in hopes of toppling him and encouraging reforms to avert chaos in a region straddling major fault lines of Middle East conflict.
Opposition activists said government forces renewed shelling of the central city of Homs on Tuesday just before Lavrov's arrival, killing some 19 people in an onslaught that they say has claimed over 300 lives in the last five days. There were also reports from residents of shelling and fighting on Tuesday between government and rebel forces in Hama, another urban stronghold of anti-Assad sentiment.
Syria says Homs - the heart of 11 months of protest against Assad's rule, parts of which are held by insurgents including army defectors - is the site of a running battle with "terrorists" directed and funded from abroad. Its references to foreign interference are widely read to include Gulf Arab states, which followed the lead of Washington and European Union countries on Tuesday in reducing their diplomatic presence in Damascus.
"The president of Syria assured us he was 'completely committed to the task of stopping violence regardless of where it may come from'," Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying after his meeting with Assad, accompanied by Russia's top spy. Lavrov, whose government wields unique leverage as a major arms supplier with long-standing political ties to Damascus, told Assad it was in Russia's interest for "Arab peoples to live in peace and agreement", the RIA news agency said. Lavrov also affirmed Russia's "readiness to help foster the swiftest exit from the crisis on the basis of positions set out in the Arab League initiative", according to Interfax.
Russia has supported an Arab League peace proposal for Syria floated last November envisaging a withdrawal of troops from cities and towns, release of prisoners, and reforms. But there was no indication from Lavrov's quoted remarks that Russia was now backing the League's explicit call on Assad to step down.
Lavrov said Assad, whose family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for 41 years, assured him he was committed to halting bloodshed by both sides and that he was ready to seek dialogue with all political groups in the country. Opposition activists have dismissed similar pledges made by Assad in the past because he continued trying to crush protests with tanks and troops and branded his foes as "terrorists".
Russia's foreign ministry said Lavrov and Foreign Intelligence Service chief Mikhail Fradkov had gone to Damascus because Moscow wanted to see "the swiftest stabilisation of the situation in Syria on the basis of the swiftest implementation of democratic reforms whose time has come".
Syrian state television showed hundreds of people gathering on a main Damascus highway to welcome Lavrov. They were waving Syrian, Russian and Hezbollah flags and held up two Russian flags made out of hundreds of red, white and blue balloons.
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