BEIRUT: MP Walid Jumblatt, during a short visit to Qatar Thursday, reiterated his early warning of Syria sliding into civil war while urging Iran and Turkey to play a role in helping end the crisis in Lebanon’s neighbor.

“Violence begets only violence,”Jumblatt told Al-Jazeera television station Thursday, warning of a potential civil war in Syria.

He called on Iran and Turkey to “come out with an initiative to save Syria from the violence and civil war.”

“What concerns me is Syria and not the regime,” Jumblatt told the Qatar-based television station.

In an interview with Reuters published Wednesday, the Druze chief said that from the start of the crisis in March Assad had ignored calls from the United States, China, Russia and his former ally Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to defuse the revolt by swiftly enacting political reform.

There is a “slow but sure decaying of the Syrian situation. It’s fatal,” he told the agency

The U.N. estimates over 5,000 Syrian, mostly civilians, have been killed in the crackdown since March 2011. Syrian authorities blame armed gangs for the death of civilians and say the country is facing a plot aimed at targeting the rule of Assad.