BEIRUT, (Reuters) – Syrian troops shelled villages, fired across frontiers and were accused of massacres in the hours before a deadline today that many doubt can usher in a U.N.-brokered ceasefire and halt a 13-month slide into all-out civil war.
Diplomats trying to contain a crisis that has inflamed the Middle East and pitched old Cold War rivals into opposing camps will not wish to abandon their most comprehensive peace plan yet. The plan’s author, international envoy Kofi Annan, visits Turkey and Iran today, while Russia hosts the Syrian foreign minister.
In Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad said nothing yesterday about whether he would honour his undertaking to Annan to start withdrawing government forces from urban areas on April 10 – a deadline that diplomats say appears to give him until midnight Syrian time, or 2100 GMT, today to comply.
Assad’s demand on Sunday for written guarantees of good faith from the rebels – which their leaders rejected out of hand – as well as the hostile actions of Syrian troops on the ground, fueled doubts that Annan’s schedule for the full truce to start by 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) on Thursday, April 12, would be respected.
Syria was to have started pulling troops out of towns and cities by Tuesday to pave the way for a ceasefire to start 48 hours later.
“April 10 has become void,” concluded Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Naci Koru. Ankara, Assad’s former ally and now a foe, deplored shooting that wounded five people in a refugee camp inside Turkey – in the border area which Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general, is expected to visit on Tuesday.
Another neighbour, Lebanon, condemned the killing of a local journalist by Syrian soldiers firing over the border.
