Annan: Syria accepts peace plan deadline

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on Monday said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed on a deadline to start implementing a peace plan, as the Red Cross chief began a new humanitarian mission there. Annan on Monday appealed to the 15-member UN Security Council to support the April 10 deadline which he said was agreed to by Assad, diplomats at a closed briefing by the former UN chief told AFP. The partial implementation of Annan's six-point peace plan would include a full cessation of hostilities within 48 hours of the deadline, they said. Damascus would start by halting the movement of troops into cities, withdraw heavy weapons from cities and start pulling forces back. However, the United States and other Western nations are skeptical that Syria will keep to a promise to start implementing the peace plan by April 10, Washington's UN envoy Susan Rice said. "Past experience would lead us to be skeptical and to worry that over the next several days, that rather than a dimunition of the violence we might yet again see an escalation of the violence," she told reporters after the Security Council meeting. Besides a humanitarian ceasefire, Annan's plan also calls for an inclusive Syrian-led political process, the right to demonstrate, and the release of people detained arbitrarily. The former UN chief said the Security Council had to start considering the deployment of an observer mission with a broad mandate to monitor events in Syria where the UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed in the past year. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said on Monday that 10,108 people have been killed since the uprising erupted in mid-March 2011. Russia has rejected the idea of a deadline, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying "ultimatums and artificial deadlines rarely help matters." Moscow, a Soviet-era ally of the Assad regime, said only the UN Security Council, where it wields veto power, could put any time restrictions on Syria's compliance with the Annan plan. "The demands should be put to all sides of the barricades," Lavrov said. "We intend to be friends with both sides in Syria," he said of Russia's support for Assad. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) president Jakob Kellenberger, meanwhile, was making his third visit to Syria since 2011, as monitors and activists said at least 18 more people, mostly civilians, were killed on Monday. Kellenberger said he would meet officials including Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and examine measures for a two-hour humanitarian ceasefire, also a condition set out in the Annan plan. "I am determined to see the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent expand their presence, range and scope of activities to address the needs of vulnerable people," he said in a statement on the two-day trip. In Istanbul on Sunday, the so-called Friends of Syria group -- Arab League members and nations including the United States, France and Germany -- steered clear of backing opposition appeals for arms. But the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile funded by Gulf Arab states, said it would pay the salaries of rebel fighters seeking to oust Assad. Official Syrian media mocked the conference, with one newspaper saying the gathering of what it called the "Enemies of Syria" was a failure. "Despite all the hype, the conference of the 'Enemies of Syria' produced only meagre results... showing it was unable to shake Syrians' rejection of foreign intervention," said Al-Baath, mouthpiece of Assad's ruling party of the same name. Colonel Kassem Saadeddine, spokesman of the rebel Free Syrian Army, accused the world of failing to protect Syrians, saying it was ignoring the Assad regime's "massacres" by refusing to arm the insurgents. On Monday, security forces pressed their crackdown on dissent, with 10 civilians, five rebel fighters and three soldiers among those killed across Syria, monitors and activists said. The official SANA news agency also said that the authorities foiled an infiltration from neighbouring Turkey by "terrorists" near the village of Khirbet al-Joze in northwestern Idlib province, killing "one terrorist."