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Annan calls for immediate Syria ceasefire

30 March 2012 21:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. International envoy Kofi Annan urged Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to immediately implement a ceasefire, as fighting raged on Friday even after the embattled president said he had accepted the peace plan, APA reports quoting AFP.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets across Syria to protest against what they regard as the inaction of Arab governments in the face of a crackdown that the UN says has cost more than 9,000 lives since March 2011.

UN-Arab League peacebroker Annan’s ceasefire appeal came as monitors said shells rained down on Homs, a main rebel bastion which has been the focus of much of President Assad’s year-long crackdown on anti-regime protests.

"We expect him to implement this plan immediately. Clearly we have not seen a cessation of hostilities on the ground. This is our great concern," the spokesman said, adding the "deadline is now" for Assad’s regime to end all violence.

The plan calls for a commitment to stop all armed violence, a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire, media access to all areas affected by the fighting, an inclusive Syrian-led political process, a right to demonstrate, and release of arbitrarily detained people.

"I can’t tell you what the next steps will be if they don’t stop now," the spokesman said, adding however that Annan was due to brief the UN Security Council on Monday and "we will take it from there."

Annan is also working to convince the Syrian opposition to "lay down their arms and start talking," he said.

State-run news agency SANA said on Thursday that "President Assad... has informed Annan that Syria approves the plan (the envoy) submitted but had made remarks about it."

Assad would "spare no effort" for the success of Annan’s six-point plan but said the proposal would only work if "terrorist acts" by foreign powers stopped.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 24 civilians and a soldier were killed in violence on Friday.

Protesters took to the streets despite a fierce assault by security forces on the town of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province in the northwest.

"The desertion of the Arabs and the silence of the Muslims are the hardest things facing Syrians," read a sign held up at a protest by hundreds of people in the Idlib settlement of Kafaroma.

Internet-based activist group The Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the main motors of the uprising, had called for people to take to the streets after the main weekly Muslim prayers.

"The Muslims and the Arabs have abandoned us... but God is with us... and our determination will carry us to victory," the group said on its Facebook page.

An Arab summit in Baghdad on Thursday, largely ignored by Sunni Arab states, approved a resolution calling for an end to the Syrian regime’s crackdown on dissent, for the opposition to unite and for parties to the conflict to launch a "serious national dialogue."

The opposition had urged a harsher statement backing hardliners Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which have called for Assad to step down and for rebels opposing his regime to be armed.

But Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that giving weapons to either side "will lead to a regional and international proxy war in Syria."

In Friday’s violence, shelling and gunfire killed five civilians, including a 12-year-old child and a woman, in the city of Homs, while two others were killed in the province of the same name, said the Observatory.

In the heaviest bloodshed elsewhere, seven civilians were killed in clashes in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor between police and demonstrators, while security forces shot dead five people in Daraa province of southern Syria.

In Saudi Arabia, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held talks with King Abdullah in a bid to crank up pressure on Assad.

In Washington, the Treasury Department announced it was targeting Defence Minister Dawoud Rajiha as well as the army’s deputy chief of staff and the head of presidential security, in its latest round of sanctions against Damascus.

Clinton is due to attend a meeting of the "Friends of Syria" group in Istanbul on Sunday.

"The main objective of this conference is to increase the pressure on the Syrian regime to end the bloody repression," a Turkish official said.