Syrian rebels said on Monday they were no longer bound by a UN-backed truce because President Bashar al-Assad had failed to observe their Friday deadline to implement the cease-fire and had only attacked government forces to defend "our people". A Syrian opposition watchdog appeared to underline the rebel statement by saying at least 80 Syrian troops were killed in a surge of attacks at the weekend.
International mediator Kofi Annan, due to brief the UN Security Council and General Assembly on Thursday, urged major powers to ensure his peace plan was implemented by both sides as it was the "only option on the table". Russia has blunted Western efforts to condemn Assad and push him from power.
The May 25 massacre of at least 108 people, nearly half of them children, in the Houla area of Homs province dealt a possibly fatal blow to Annan's proposed cease-fire, which was supposed to take effect on April 12 but never did. "We have decided to end our commitment to this (cease-fire)," said Free Syrian Army spokesman Major Sami al-Kurdi. "We have resumed our attacks but we are doing defensive attacks which means we are only attacking checkpoints in the cities."
Kurdi said a UN observer mission in Syria should be turned into a "peace-enforcing mission", or that the world should impose a no-fly zone and a buffer zone to help bring Assad down.
Such ideas have gained little traction previously with Western powers, let alone their Russian and Chinese critics. The latest violence and a defiant speech by Assad on Sunday raised questions about how long Annan can pursue his threadbare peace plan on behalf of the United Nations and the Arab League.
But UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told Reuters Annan's mission "remains central" to resolving the Syrian crisis. Annan has inserted 300 UN observers into Syria to verify the non-existent truce. Annan himself "feels that perhaps the time has come, or is approaching, when the international community has to review ... the crisis in Syria and decide what needs to be done to ensure implementation of the six-point plan," his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters Television in Geneva.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said local doctors had confirmed the names of 80 government troops killed by the rebels. Insurgents told the group they had killed more than 100 soldiers and destroyed some tanks in clashes across Syria, including Damascus and Idlib province in the north-west. US officials do not appear ready to give up on Annan's Syria mission, instead hoping that Russia, Assad's staunchest backer among major powers, can be coaxed into discussing a diplomatic solution that might lead to his departure.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke by telephone to Annan while in Stockholm on Monday, briefing him on her efforts to engage Russia on a "political transition" to remove Assad from power, a senior US State Department official said. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Clinton had invited Annan to Washington for talks on Friday and that Clinton expected to meet senior officials from Europe and the Middle East to discuss Syria on Wednesday in Istanbul.
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