Syria demands peace before troops withdraw from cities

BEIRUT - The Syrian government will not pull troops from cities and towns engulfed by the country's unrest before life returns to normal in these areas, a high-ranking official said Friday. Activists reported fresh violence yesterday that claimed the lives of at least two dozen people across the nation.

The statement by Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi was the first response to an appeal by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to Syrian authorities to stop military activities as "the stronger party," in a "gesture of good faith" to the lightly-armed opposition.

	Syrian President Bashar Assad shaking hands with a soldier during a tour in the hotly-contested Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs.
	Photo by: Reuters

It suggests that any implementation of Annan's six-point peace plan to end the conflict - which Syrian President Bashar Assad accepted earlier this week - will be a long and complicated process. Damascus appears to be playing for time by indicating broad agreement with the plan but then quibbling over or ignoring the details.

One of the centerpieces of the plan is the withdrawal of Syrian troops from cities, but Makdessi told state TV late Friday that the military is only in populated areas "in a state of self-defense and protecting civilians.

"The battle to topple the state is over," Makdessi said. "Our goal now is to ensure stability and create a perspective for reform and development in Syria while preventing others from sabotaging the path of reform.

"The Syrian army is not happy to be present in residential areas," he added. "Once peace and security prevail in these areas, the army will not stay nor wait for Kofi Annan to leave. This is a Syrian matter."

Syria's uprising began a year ago with peaceful protests against Assad's regime. In the face of a fierce crackdown, the uprising has become increasingly militarized and opposition groups now say their only hope is to drive out Assad. The UN estimates more than 9,000 people have been killed in the fighting.

International opponents of Assad are struggling to pin down a strategy on Syria, as the peace plan put forward by Annan this week is failing to get off the ground. Annan's proposal to end the violence requires the government to immediately pull troops and heavy weapons out of cities and towns, and abide by a two-hour halt in fighting every day to allow humanitarian access and medical evacuations.

"The government must stop first and then discuss a cessation of hostilities with the other side," Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told reporters in Geneva on Friday. "We are appealing to the stronger party to make a gesture of good faith ... The deadline is now."

Assad promised on Thursday to "spare no effort" to make sure Annan's plan succeeds. But he demanded that armed forces battling his regime commit to halting violence as well.

Some Syrians are frustrated at the lack of will for a foreign military intervention and are deeply skeptical that Assad will carry out Annan's peace plan, saying the president has accepted it just to win time while his forces continue their bloody campaign to crush the uprising.

Syria's state-run news agency SANA said Syrian troops foiled an infiltration attempt by gunmen from Lebanon into a village near the western town of Talkalakh. SANA said troops confiscated weapons and killed and wounded some of the infiltrators as others fled back into Lebanon.

In other violence, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government troops killed at least 25 people yesterday, mostly in the southern province of Daraa, the northwestern province of Idlib and the central region of Homs.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said security forces killed 24 people yesterday, nine of them in Idlib and eight in Homs.

The Observatory reported shooting at a funeral, in the well-to-do Damascus neighborhood of Kfar Souseh, of a man who was shot dead Friday by security forces. It had no word on casualties.

For the U.S. and its allies, Syria is proving an especially murky conflict with no easy solutions. Assad's regime is one of Washington's clearest foes, a government that has long been closely allied with Iran and anti-Israel groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-led Gulf countries are eager to see Assad's fall in the hope of breaking Syria out of its alliance with their regional rival, Shiite-majority Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was yesterday flying from Saudi Arabia - where she held talks with Saudi King Abdullah and others on ways to resolve the Syrian crisis and other regional strategies - to Turkey, ahead of today's 60-nation gathering of the "Friends of the Syrian People" in Istanbul.

The U.S. remains opposed to arming Syria's rebels, which some Gulf states have proposed, even as continued violence is stymying UN efforts to persuade Damascus to make good on a cease-fire plan it has accepted.

Syria and its allies have in recent days claimed political victory over an opposition struggle to end four decades of Assad family rule, noting that Annan's UN plan for political negotiations has dropped an Arab League call for Assad to go.

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