Syria's Assad demands rebels stop attacks

BEIRUT -- Syria's President Bashar Assad said yesterday he will spare no effort to make United Nations envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan a success, but he demanded that armed opponents battling his regime commit to halting violence.

In brazen attacks gunmen kidnapped a high-ranking military pilot outside the capital and assassinated two army colonels in the country's business hub, in what appeared to be part of a stepped-up campaign by the battered opposition against the symbols of Assad's power.

The violence yesterday underlined the Syrian government's predicament: Acceptance and implementation of the UN plan, which calls for a full cease-fire, risks spelling the end of an autocratic regime that has relied largely on brute force to stay in power over the past four decades.

Assad's condition of an express promise from the opposition to stop attacks could complicate Annan's attempts to bring an end to more than a year of violence that the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people. The opposition is deeply skeptical Assad will carry out Annan's plan, believing he has accepted it just to win time while his forces continue their bloody campaign to crush the uprising. -- AP