BEIRUT: Syria has finally granted top U.N. diplomats permission to visit the country, but a leading U.S. senator suggested Monday that the time for diplomacy is over, calling instead for airstrikes on President Bashar Assad’s forces.
 
The U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, will travel to Damascus Saturday for what would be his first visit since he was named to the post last month.
 
U.N. humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos said that Damascus had agreed to also allow her to visit the country later this week, an announcement that followed sharp international criticism of Damascus for not letting her into the country last week.
 
U.S. Senator John McCain meanwhile called for military action against Assad’s forces, who shelled the rebel city of Rastan for the second straight day Monday while battling on several fronts across the country.
 
Meanwhile, the Red Cross negotiated for a fourth day with Syrian authorities to be allowed deliver aid and evacuate the wounded from the battered Baba Amr rebel district of the city.
 
McCain said the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria through airstrikes on Assad’s forces.
 
“The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organize and plan their political and military activities against Assad,” McCain said in remarks on the Senate floor.
 
McCain has previously called for arming the Syrian opposition. But he said Monday the help rebels needed most urgently was “relief from Assad’s tank and artillery sieges in the many cities that are still contested” in Syria.
 
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among countries that have called for Syrian rebels to be armed, but there is little appetite in the West for Libya-style military intervention that could have unforeseen consequences in the conflict-prone Middle East.
 
“The bombardment of Rastan by Syrian forces has resumed,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a day after violent shelling of the rebel city in Homs province killed seven people, four of them children.
 
Rastan is strategically located on the highway linking the capital Damascus with north Syria.
 
The rebel fighters had on Feb. 5 declared Rastan to be “liberated” from Assad’s control, but since Homs was overrun by regime forces Thursday, the deserters have been bracing for an onslaught on Rastan and on Qusayr, also near Homs.
 
Meanwhile, at least six people were killed in violence across Syria, the Britain-based Observatory said.
 
An activist was killed in the early hours of the day while he was filming fighting that erupted in the southern city of Deraa, cradle of the anti-Assad revolt, the Observatory said.
 
“A civilian died after being tortured by security forces” in Mleiha al-Gharbiya near Deraa, it added.
 
A 14-year-old boy was killed by sniper fire in Saraqeb in the northwestern province of Idlib, and a civilian was killed when the army stormed the town of Yabrud in the province of Damascus.
 
A 13-year old girl was also killed by sniper fire in Homs province and a civilian was killed in Aleppo province, which witnessed demonstrations that led to the arrest of three students, activists said.
 
Secretly shot video footage aired by Britain’s Channel 4 television showed what it said were Syrian patients being tortured by medical staff at a state-run hospital in Homs.
 
Also Monday, a bomb explosion hit an oil pipeline in Syria’s eastern province of Deir al-Zour Monday as Syrian troops began a sweep in the region, opposition activists said.
 
The reports could not be independently verified.
 
The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent were still seeking approval from Syrian authorities to enter Baba Amr to help civilians there.
 
“At the moment we are blocked by the Syrian army and government,” Yves Daccord, the ICRC’s director-general, told Swiss Radio and Television (RTS).
 
“The situation is extremely difficult, the weather conditions are tragic. It is very cold, there is fighting and people don’t have access to food or water, and above all there is a big problem of evacuating the wounded,” he said.
 
ICRC and Syrian Red Crescent teams distributed food and blankets to civilians, including families who had fled Baba Amr, in two Homs neighborhoods, ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said.
 
On the diplomatic front, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he hoped a meeting with Arab counterparts in Cairo Saturday would bring the world closer to agreement on how to end the bloodshed, but gave no sign Moscow would stop protecting its old ally Assad.
 
Moscow, along with China, has been widely condemned in the West for vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have backed an Arab League call for Assad to step down as part of a political transition.
 
Some Western powers expressed hope that Vladimir Putin’s election as Russian president Sunday might provide an opening for a change in policy.
 
British Prime Minister David Cameron said he would urge Putin to support a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian access to Syria and an end to the violence.
 
“I will be speaking to President Putin later today and I will be saying that it is very important that we have a unified U.N. Security Council resolution about humanitarian aid, about humanitarian access, that puts a stop to the appalling killing that is taking place,” Cameron said.
 
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Moscow had isolated itself with regard to the Arab world and the international community following its stance on Syria.
 
“We can understand that during the election period the moment wasn’t right to make the Russian position evolve,” Juppe said.
 
“I would like therefore that Russia’s position changes and I am ready to discuss it with the Foreign Minister, the same one if he is kept in his post, or his successor if he is changed.”
 
Juppe said he did not think it was impossible to get a U.N. Security Council resolution and that this was something that Paris would be working on in the coming days. Initial signals from Russia, though, were that diplomacy still has some way to go before a resolution will pass muster.
 
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said Monday that a new U.S.-drafted resolution on Syria is only slightly different from a draft Russia vetoed last month and needs to be more balanced.
 
Western envoys at the United Nations said last week that the United States had drafted an outline for a new resolution demanding access for humanitarian aid workers in besieged Syrian towns and an end to the violence there.
 
“The new U.S. draft U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria is a slightly renewed version of the previous vetoed document. It needs to be significantly balanced,” Gatilov said on Twitter.
 
Assad has said his political reforms will ensure a multiparty election within three months based on a new constitution, but the opposition says the bloodshed makes a mockery of such plans.
 
While European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Russia to help get humanitarian aid to Homs, she asked Moscow to recognise the need for “a new leadership” in Syria.
 
China, which has twice joined Russia in blocking U.N. Security Council action against Syria, said it would send its envoy, Li Huaxin, to Damascus Tuesday.
 
“China still maintains that a political solution offers the fundamental escape from the Syrian crisis,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said in Beijing.