Assad Wednesday named a Baath Party stalwart to form a new government, signaling no political concessions to a 15-month-old uprising, as helicopters and tanks pounded rebels near the Mediterranean coast. The appointment of Riyad Farid Hijab, agriculture minister in the outgoing government, as premier follows a parliamentary election last month which authorities said was a step toward political reform but which opponents dismissed as a sham. “We expected Assad to play a game and appoint a nominal independent but he chose a hard-core Baathist,” said opposition campaigner Najati Tayyara. The new government, like its predecessors, would wield no real power, he added. Activists said army helicopters and tanks attacked rebel positions in the coastal province of Latakia for a second day on Wednesday, in the heaviest clashes there since the revolt against Assad erupted in March last year. The relentless violence has shredded an eight-week-old ceasefire deal brokered by former United Nations chief Kofi Annan. Rebels, who say they are no longer bound by the accord, have killed 100 soldiers this week, according to one monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Russia called for a broad international meeting, includingTurkey and Iran, the Arab League, European Union and major UN Security Council members, to rescue Annan's plan. The British-based observatory said rebels seized control of police and intelligence buildings in the Latakia town of Selma overnight, before army reinforcements arrived at dawn. The soldiers killed a rebel captain in Selma, the observatory said. Local activists provided shaky footage of a Syrian helicopter firing rockets. A member of the Free Syrian Army in Latakia said its lightly-armed fighters faced shellfire. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called for a broad international meeting on the crisis in Syria with the aim of reviving Annan's peace plan, but made clear he believed Assad's opponents were responsible for its failure so far. Western powers also support Annan's peace plan but say pressure must be stepped up against Assad after the massacre of 108 women, children and men in Houla nearly two weeks ago. They hold Assad's forces responsible, a charge Damascus rejects. “We believe it is necessary to assemble a meeting of states with real influence on different groups,” Lavrov said in Beijing.
