Syria has accepted a proposal crafted by Kofi Annan that aims to end bloodshed roiling the country, the envoy’s spokesman said yesterday, as monitors gave a toll of almost 10,000 dead in the year-long uprising.
With fighting raging in several flashpoints across Syria in which at least another 17 people died, United Nations-Arab League envoy Mr Annan, on a visit to Beijing, cautioned that implementation of his six-point plan is key to peace.
Mr Annan’s plan includes calls for a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire and access to all areas affected by the fighting in Syria.
“The Syrian government has written to the Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan accepting his six-point plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council,” Mr Annan’s spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said in a statement issued in Geneva.
“Mr Annan views this as an important initial step that could bring an end to the violence and the bloodshed, provide aid to the suffering, and create an environment conducive to a political dialogue that would fulfil the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people,” he said.
The former UN secretary general held talks in Beijing with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who pledged his support for his mediation efforts – as did Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when Mr Annan visited Moscow over the weekend.
China and Russia – both allies of Syria – have provoked Western fury by twice blocking UN Security Council resolutions that condemned President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
According to Mr Fawzi, Mr Annan has written to the Assad regime asking Damascus to “put its (plan’s) commitments into immediate effect.”
He has also urged the release of people detained over the past year of the uprising against the Assad regime.
“Mr Annan has stressed that implementation will be key, not only for the Syrian people, who are caught in the middle of this tragedy, but also for the region and the international community as a whole,” Mr Fawzi said.
Western nations gave a cautious welcome to the news, with most envoys saying Syria’s actions now will be a test of its attitude to international calls to halt the killings.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, gave a new toll of almost 10,000 people killed in violence linked to the crackdown on dissent by the regime since March last year. A total of 9,734 people have died, including 7,056 civilians, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
The United Nations yesterday gave an updated toll of “more than 9,000 people” killed, but did not specify if the deaths included soldiers and rebel troops.
“Violence on the ground has continued unabated,” Robert Serry, a UN Middle East peace envoy, told a Security Council meeting in New York.
“Credible estimates put the probable death toll since the beginning of the uprising one year ago to more than 9,000. It is urgent to stop the fighting and prevent a further violent escalation of the conflict,” Mr Serry added.
Even as he was speaking, yrian forces were pressing their assault across the country with at least 17 people, including three women, killed yesterday, the Observatory said.
The monitoring group said nine of those who died were civilians; among them one man who died in intense clashes near the central town of Qusayr, near the border with Lebanon.
Officials said the clashes also spilled over into Lebanon as Syrian troops chasing rebels made a brief incursion into a sparsely populated area of Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa region.