Syria ceasefire under threat
By Our reporter
Monday, April 16, 2012
Syria’s ceasefire increasingly was under threat yesterday as the government vowed a crackdown on a wave of “terrorist attacks” and its forces shelled Homs on the day the first United Nations peace monitors were due to enter the country.
An initial team of U.N. ceasefire monitors was due to arrive on Sunday evening and will be deployed on Monday in an effort to keep the peace plan on track, the spokesman for international mediator Kofi Annan said.
They will be joined by two dozen more observers in coming days in line with a U.N. Security Council resolution adopted on Saturday authorizing the deployment of up to 30, Ahmad Fawzi said. “Of course we are hoping that the process holds together until the observers get on the ground,” Fawzi told Reuters in Geneva.
The Syrian government said it could not be responsible for the safety of the monitors unless it is involved in “all steps on the ground”, government spokeswoman and presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban said. She also said the number of monitors could rise to 250, but that Syria reserved the right to agree on the nationality of those participating.
On the day the first observers with due in Syria, the city of Homs, one of the hotbeds of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, was being bombed by government forces at a rate of “one shell per minute”, activists said. They also reported attacks elsewhere in the country.
Syria said it would stop what it called “terrorist groups” from continuing criminal acts, state TV quoted a security source as saying, casting further doubt on whether the ceasefire would hold.
