Associated Press Associated Press ADVERTISING BEIRUT — Syria’s President Bashar Assad said Thursday he will spare no effort to make U.N. envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan a success, but demanded that armed opponents battling his regime commit to halting violence.
Associated Press
BEIRUT — Syria’s President Bashar Assad said Thursday he will spare no effort to make U.N. envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan a success, but demanded that armed opponents battling his regime commit to halting violence.
In brazen attacks, gunmen kidnapped a high-ranking military pilot outside the capital and assassinated two army colonels in the country’s business hub, in what appeared to be part of a stepped-up campaign by the battered opposition against the symbols of Assad’s power.
The violence Thursday underlined the Syrian government’s predicament: Acceptance and implementation of the U.N. plan, which calls for a full cease-fire, risks spelling the end of an autocratic regime which has relied largely on brute force to stay in power over the past four decades.
Assad’s condition of an expressed promise from the opposition to stop attacks could complicate Annan’s attempts to bring an end to more than a year of violence that the U.N. says has killed more than 9,000 people.
The opposition has cautiously welcomed Annan’s six-point plan, but it is also deeply skeptical Assad will carry it out, believing he has accepted it just to win time while his forces continue their bloody campaign to crush the uprising. Armed rebels are unlikely to stop fighting unless offensives by security forces halt. It is also difficult for rebel forces to uniformly stop fighting since there is no central command structure.
Last year, Assad agreed to a peace plan similar to Annan’s, pledging to work with observers who traveled to Syria on a mission to end the crackdown. But the regime failed to pull out its tanks from towns and cities, saying the country was under attack from the armed groups.
