Syria scuttles truce plan with new demands

BEIRUT -- A UN-brokered plan to stop the bloodshed in Syria effectively collapsed yesterday after President Bashar Assad's government raised new, last-minute demands that the country's largest rebel group swiftly rejected.

The truce plan, devised by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, was supposed to go into effect Tuesday, with a withdrawal of Syrian forces from population centers, followed within 48 hours by a cease-fire by both sides in the uprising against four decades of repressive rule by the Assad family.

But yesterday, Syria's Foreign Ministry said that, ahead of any troop pullback, the government needs written guarantees from the opposition that they will lay down their arms.

The commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Riad al-Asaad, said that while his group is ready to abide by a truce, it does not recognize the regime "and for that reason we will not give guarantees."

Expectations had been low, in any case, that the Assad regime would honor the agreement.

Russia, an Assad ally that supports the cease-fire plan, may be the only one able to salvage it. The rest of the international community, unwilling to contemplate military intervention, has little leverage over Syria.

Instead of preparing for withdrawal, regime troops have stepped up shelling attacks on residential areas, killing dozens every day in what the opposition sees as a frenzied rush to gain ground. Activists said at least 21 people, perhaps as many as 40, were killed yesterday.

"Mortar rounds are falling like rain," said activist Tarek Badrakhan, describing an assault Sunday in Homs. He spoke via Skype as explosions were heard in the background. The regime is exploiting the truce plan "to kill and commit massacres," he said.

Just as Annan complained yesterday that the escalation was "unacceptable," Syria said its acceptance of the Annan deal last week was misunderstood and suggested it would not be able to withdraw under current conditions.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi said Syria also wants assurances from Annan that Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Assad's most active critics, that they would halt "financing and arming of terrorist groups." Qatar and Saudi Arabia are said to be creating a multimillion-dollar fund to pay rebel fighters; Turkey has floated the idea of creating buffer zones for refugees in Syrian territory, near the Turkish border.

While Annan's plan calls for eventual negotiations over Syria's political future, anti-regime activists say huge numbers of protesters would probably flood the streets and quickly topple Assad if he were forced to halt his crackdown.

The Syrian foreign minister is expected in Moscow today, but it is not clear whether Russia would step in to try to salvage the Annan plan it had supported enthusiastically.