Iran condemns violent Syrian crackdown

LISBON, Portugal - Syrian President Bashar Assad should back away from his violent crackdown on protesters and enter talks with the opposition, Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday.

"There should be talks" between the Syrian government and its opponents, Ahmadinejad said in a live interview in Tehran with Portuguese broadcaster Radiotelevisao Portuguesa.

"A military solution is never the right solution," Ahmadinejad said, according to a simultaneous Portuguese translation of his comments.

"We believe that freedom and justice and respect for others are the rights of all nations. All governments have to recognize these rights," he said. "Problems have to be dealt with through dialogue."

In both March and June of this year, Iranian security officials used tear gas and electric batons to disperse protesters in Tehran demanding reforms and the release of political prisoners. Scores were arrested. Following the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential elections, as many as 150 protesters were killed by security forces.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said last month that Assad should answer the legitimate demands of his people.

"Other countries in the region can help the Syrian government and people to talk to each other with a view to resolving their differences and introducing the reforms that are needed," Ahmadinejad said.

Iran, Damascus' chief ally, has blamed the U.S. and Israel for instigating more than five months of protests in Syria.

The U.S. and other nations have accused Iran of helping Assad crush the uprising.

"Other countries have no right to interfere in ... domestic discussions," Ahmadinejad said, citing NATO's intervention in Libya as an example of misguided actions.

Meanwhile, Syrian security forces unleashed a barrage of gunfire Wednesday, killing at least 11 people and leaving thousands cowering in their homes as President Assad's troops kept up the government's assault on a 6-month-old uprising, activists and witnesses said.

Nine of the dead were in Homs, a hotbed of opposition to Assad's autocratic regime. Two others were shot dead during raids in Sarameen, in northern Syria.

In a step the opposition says shows the regime is intractable, a planned visit by the Arab League secretary general Wednesday to push Assad to make major concessions to defuse the crisis was called off at the last minute at the government's request.

Arab League Deputy Secretary-General Ahmed Ben Heli told reporters in Egypt that Elaraby will now visit Damascus on Saturday. He said the decision was made in a phone call between Elaraby and Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem.

For days, security forces have been pursuing activists and anti-government protesters in Homs, part of a ferocious crackdown on the most serious challenge to the 40-year Assad dynasty. The U.N. says more than 2,200 people have died in nearly six months of protests.

Syria has sealed the country off from foreign journalists and most international observers, insisting that foreigners are meddling, making it difficult to independently verify information coming out of the country. The government's violent crackdown has led to sharp international criticism and sanctions aimed at isolating the regime, including a ban on the import of Syrian oil, a mainstay of the regime.

Arab League officials in Egypt had said Secretary General Nabil Elaraby would have presented a plan under which Assad would immediately cease all military operations, release all political prisoners, begin dialogue and announce his intention to form a national unity government and hold pluralistic presidential elections by the end of his term in 2014.

The Local Coordination Committees, one of the main Syrian opposition activist groups, said the initiative provided "a good basis that can be built upon" as a way out of the crisis.