West endorses Syria timeline

Western powers have drafted a resolution in the UN Security Council giving support to a deadline of April 10 for the start of a cease-fire in Syria, French and US diplomats said Tuesday.

American UN ambassador Susan Rice and French ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters that the resolution would be discussed in the Security Council over the next two days.

Rice said the continued violence between anti-government rebels and Syrian government forces was "not encouraging," but that the UN resolution would give "further support to joint special envoy (Kofi) Annan's initiatives" to end the violence.

"Should the government of Syria use this window rather than to de-escalate to intensify the violence, it will be most unfortunate and it will be certainly our view that the Security Council will need to respond to that failure in a very urgent and serious way," Rice said.

Monitoring mission

Meanwhile the UN said it was sending a team from its peacekeeping department to Syria to discuss a mission of observers to monitor a cease-fire that the government is said to have agreed to.

"A DPKO (Department of Peacekeeping Operations) planning mission should be arriving in Damascus within 48 hours," Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters news agency.

Annan, whom the UN and Arab League sent to Syria to find a way to end the violence, told the UN Security Council on Monday that the government of President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to start implementing his six-point peace plan by April 10.

The timeline would firstly see the Syrian military fully withdraw from dissident towns and cities, paving the way for a complete cease-fire within two days.

Annan asked for the Security Council's support on the deadline, and for their consideration of sending a monitoring mission, which would comprise 200 to 250 unarmed observers. One UN diplomat said the full mission could take at least two months to get to Syria.

"Mr. Annan is grateful for the Russian and Chinese support and the unity that the Security Council again has shown in backing his plan and ensuring its implementation," Fawzi said.

No indication of diminishing violence

The Assad regime initially agreed to the UN peace plan a week ago, but has continued its violent crackdown on anti-government rebels. A surge in violence on Tuesday killed 29 people, more than half of them civilians in north and central Syria, according to activists and monitors.

"They burned down 14 houses yesterday," opposition activist Sayyed Mahmud told AFP news agency from Dael, a town in the dissident Daraa province. "As part of the regime's campaign to starve the people, troops are raiding homes, destroying food stocks and equipment. They go into bakeries and destroy the dough. There are 15-hour power cuts a day."

Red Cross chief Jakob Kellenberger was in Damascus on Tuesday, meeting with government officials on the implementation of a daily two-hour cease-fire to allow aid workers to evacuate the wounded and deliver supplies.

acb/sej (AFP, Reuters)