U.S. plans pro-'Syrian people' alliance

Washington vowed to gather "friends and allies who support the Syrian people," a promise echoed by Turkey, as the Assad regime escalated its opposition assault. "In the coming days we will continue our very active discussions with friends and allies who support the Syrian people, along with the opposition Syrian National Council, to crystallize the international community's next steps in that effort to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people and to pursue that transition to democracy," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the friends and allies would seek to tighten sanctions on the regime of President Bashar Assad and to get humanitarian aid to attacked Syrians. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initiated a "friends of a democratic Syria" theme Sunday -- a day after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution pressing Assad to step aside -- when she said the Obama administration would now "work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition's peaceful, political plans for change." Two days later Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara could not stay silent after the "fiasco" of the Russian and Chinese veto and vowed to "launch a new initiative with countries that stand by the Syrian people instead of the regime." The United States is working closely with NATO ally Turkey -- a former Assad supporter that is now among its harshest critics -- to bring a new coalition together, officials said. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called Wednesday for an international summit "as soon as possible" to press Assad to step aside. In an interview with Turkey's NTV news channel, he didn't say if Russia and China would take part, but said Turkey wanted the group to be "as wide as possible." "We won't leave Syria to its own destiny," he told the network before flying to Washington for meetings, including with Clinton. "We are determined to form a platform for broad international consensus." He declined to say if Ankara was considering a military-backed humanitarian intervention to help quell the violence. At the same time, senior European Union officials said Wednesday the 27-nation body would soon impose harsh new sanctions on Syria, The Wall Street Journal reported. And the nine-member Gulf Cooperation Council and the 22-member Arab League planned to take action on Syria at separate meetings this weekend. Six council members -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- withdrew their ambassadors from Damascus and expelled Syria's envoys Tuesday. The league separately asked the United Nations to join it in sending observers back to Syria, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in New York Wednesday. The league's earlier mission was scrapped due to flagrant violence. The Assad regime escalated its onslaught on the Syrian opposition Wednesday with the most intense bombardment on rebel-held areas so far, activists said. Between 53 and 60 people died in the western city of Homs near Lebanon as government forces bombarded Syria's third-biggest city for a sixth successive day, London's Syrian Observatory for Human Rights opposition group said. Tanks, heavy artillery, rockets and mortars were used on an unprecedented scale, witnesses said, with more than 200 rockets falling in three hours on just one part of Homs, the opposition-controlled district of Baba Amr, residents said. Fires burned and smoke billowed over rooftops, an activist video posted on YouTube that purported to be shot Wednesday indicated. Another video appeared to show a man running down the street cradling a toddler who had a stream of blood pouring from her temple. It was not possible to verify either video. There were also reports 18 premature babies died in a hospital after power cuts caused their incubators to fail, the BBC reported. Syrian state TV denied the reports, claiming all hospitals in the area were functioning normally.