Syria scuttles truce plan with new demands
Regime needs written guarantee that fighters will lay
down their weapons:
LEBANON: A U.N.-brokered plan to stop the bloodshed in Syria
effectively collapsed Sunday after President Bashar Assad's government
raised new, last-minute demands that the country's largest rebel group
swiftly rejected. The truce plan, devised by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi
Annan, was supposed to go into effect on Tuesday, with a withdrawal of
Syrian forces from population centers, followed within 48 hours by a
cease-fire by both sides in the uprising against four decades of
repressive rule by the Assad family.
But on Sunday, Syria's Foreign Ministry said that ahead of any troop
pullback, the government needs written guarantees from opposition
fighters that they will lay down their weapons.
The commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Riad al-Asaad, said that
while his group is ready to abide by a truce, it does not recognize the
regime “and for that reason we will not give guarantees.”
Annan's spokesman had no comment on the setback. The envoy has not
said what would happen if his deadlines were ignored.
Even before the setback, expectations were low that the Assad regime
would honor the agreement.
Russia, an Assad ally that supports the cease-fire plan, may now be
the only one able to salvage it. The rest of the international
community, unwilling to contemplate military intervention, has little
leverage over Syria.
In recent days, instead of preparing for a withdrawal, regime troops
have stepped up shelling attacks on residential areas, killing dozens of
civilians every day in what the opposition described as a frenzied rush
to gain ground. Activists said at least 21 people were killed in
violence on Sunday and as many as 40.
“Mortar rounds are falling like rain,” said activist Tarek Badrakhan,
describing an assault in the central city of Homs on Sunday. He spoke
via Skype as explosions were heard in the background. The regime is
exploiting the truce plan “to kill and commit massacres,” he said. |
