* People who meet U.N. monitors possibly killed-spokesman
* Failure to withdraw weapons “unacceptable”
* U.N. monitors to stay in Hama after shelling, shooting
* Car packed with arms seized at Syria-Lebanon border – SANA
(Recasts with Annan spokesman)
By Oliver Holmes and Stephanie Nebehay
BEIRUT/GENEVA, April 24 (Reuters) – Syria has failed to
comply with a pledge to withdraw weapons from cities, and
citizens who meet U.N. truce monitors may have been killed,
international mediator Kofi Annan will tell the Security Council
on Tuesday, his spokesman said.
As violence flared in the Syrian capital Damascus, spokesman
Ahmad Fawzi said Annan would ask for a “stronger presence” of
monitors to watch over the country’s ragged ceasefire.
Satellite imagery showed Syrian forces had not withdrawn
heavy weapons from urban centres and returned to their barracks,
as they are required to do under a plan drawn up by Annan, said
Fawzi.
“This is unacceptable, and Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan
will be saying this to the Security Council today when he
addresses them in closed session,” Fawzi added in remarks on
U.N. Television.
Annan had also received credible reports that after monitors
left a town, people who met them were approached by Syrian
soldiers “or even worse, perhaps killed,” said Fawzi.
Observers from the fledgling United Nations mission visited
on Tuesday the central province of Homs, hotbed of a
13-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, as part
of efforts to silence the guns 12 days after the accord was
struck.
Under its terms, both sides are supposed to adhere to a
ceasefire while the army withdraws tanks and heavy weapons from
population centres – requirements that the U.N. and France have
made clear are not being heeded.
“They (Syrian authorities) are claiming that this has
happened. Satellite imagery, however, and credible reports show
that this has not fully happened,” Fawzi said.
Three Syrian military officers were killed in Damascus on
Tuesday, state media and opposition groups said, and at least
three people were wounded in a car bomb blast in the capital in
further blows to the accord.
SANA, the state news agency, said an “armed terrorist group”
shot dead two army officers near Damascus, while the UK-based
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a third was killed in
the capital’s Barzeh neighbourhood.
Damascus residents said the explosion in a pickup truck
directly outside an Iranian cultural centre, in a popular
shopping district, was loud but caused limited damage.
Windows in nearby shops were not shattered and there were no
signs of damage to the centre, run by Assad’s powerful regional
ally, Tehran. Shopkeepers said four people were injured,
including a taxi driver.
The pro-Assad Ikhbaria television channel blamed the blast
on “armed terrorists” – shorthand for the rebels who have been
fighting to overthrow Assad, inspired by Arab Spring uprisings
against autocratic rulers in North Africa and the Middle East.
The United Nations says security forces have killed at least
9,000 people in the conflict.
Damascus says 2,600 of its security personnel have died at
the hands of insurgents who have seized control of pockets of
towns and cities across the country of 23 million and who
continue to launch guerrilla attacks.
SANA said on Tuesday officials on the Syria-Lebanon border
had seized a car carrying ammunition and weapons, including
three machineguns and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
CEASEFIRE “INCOMPLETE”
U.N. officials said 11 members of a planned 300-strong
monitoring mission were now in Syria to track the stuttering
progress of the April 12 truce engineered by Annan.
Anti-government groups say even the minimal U.N. presence
has led to some decline in the daily death toll although they
accuse the army of simply parking tanks out of sight and
resuming operations the moment monitors’ backs are turned.
Two observers were now staying permanently in Hama, a U.N.
official in Geneva said, after activists said 31 people were
killed on Monday in shelling and shooting in the city, a hub of
the anti-Assad uprising, immediately after a visit by a
monitoring team.
“Two are stationed in Hama now. They went back to Hama today
because of reports of killing of a significant number of people
with automatic weapons after they had been there,” Annan
spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said.
An activist in Douma, a town east of Damascus that received
a U.N. monitoring visit on Monday, said there were tanks on the
streets and two buildings had been hit by shells.
France said it still supported Annan’s peace plan but could
not do so forever without changes on the ground, most notably in
the deployment of pro-Assad forces.
“The regime must not get it wrong this time,” Foreign
Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said. “It cannot continue to
mislead the international community for much longer. When the
time comes, we will have to take the necessary measures required
if the situation on the ground continues.”
For all the rhetoric, France and other Western powers have
few tools at their disposal to get at Assad, who succeeded his
long-ruling father Hafez in 2000 and who has brushed aside all
calls to hand over power.
Military intervention similar to the air campaign in Muammar
Gaddafi’s Libya could draw in powerful Assad allies such as Iran
and Hezbollah militants, and Russia and China are opposed to the
U.N. sanctions that Washington and Europe are calling for.
VAIN HOPE FOR U.N. MISSION
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will brief the Security
Council every 15 days about developments in Syria and submit
proposals as needed for adjusting the mandate of the observer
mission, to be called UNSMIS.
Monday’s shelling in Hama has deepened scepticism that the
monitoring mission – even when it reaches full size – will
effect a lasting reduction in violence.
Tunisian President Moncef al-Marzouki was the most candid,
telling the al-Hayat regional newspaper it was doomed to fail.
“I do not expect it to succeed, because the number of
observers is very small. Three hundred people cannot do
anything,” he said.
The grinding conflict has crippled Syria’s oil- and
tourism-driven economy, leaving at least a million people in
need of humanitarian aid, according to a joint U.N.-Syrian
assessment mission reached last month.
As with foreign journalists, U.N. aid agencies have been
largely barred from Syria, although the U.N. World Food
Programme said it aimed to deliver aid to 500,000 people “in the
coming weeks”, roughly double the number it expects to reach
this month.
(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Louis Charbonneau and
Michelle Nichols at the United Nations, Stephanie Nebehay in
Geneva and John Irish in Paris; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing
by Andrew Heavens)
