WORLD BRIEFS

SYRIA: UN observers set up HQ

Six UN observers set up headquarters in Damascus on Monday and began reaching out to the government and its opponents in a bid to start healing the country's divides, even as growing violence jeopardized those plans. A UN Security Council resolution says the monitors' work depends on the continued observance of a cease-fire that went into effect Thursday. But numerous reports of truce violations by security forces and armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, which resulted in the deaths of 12 civilians and an unspecified number of government forces Monday, left the feasibility of the mission in doubt. The observer team is led by Moroccan Col. Ahmed Himmiche, and 25 more members are expected to arrive in the next few days.

NORTH KOREA: Rocket launch condemned

The UN Security Council strongly condemned Friday's rocket launch Monday, announcing it will impose new sanctions and warning of further action if Pyongyang conducts another launch or a new nuclear test. Acting swiftly, the 15-member council, including China, North Korea's closest ally, adopted a presidential statement underscoring its united opposition to the launch, which violated UN sanctions, and the military policy being pursued by the young new leader, Kim Jong Un.

RUSSIA: Massacre report withheld

Russia's refusal to cooperate with the European Court of Human Rights in exposing a 1940 war crime in which 22,000 Poles were killed in the Katyn forest shows "callous disregard" for the victims and their relatives, the court said Monday. The court, based in Strasbourg, France, said it couldn't address the demands for full disclosure on the massacre because Moscow has refused to hand over the results of a 14-year investigation into the killings ordered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin after the Red Army invaded Poland in September 1939, a massacre of Polish military officers and intellectuals taken prisoner during the invasion and spirited to camps in western Russia.