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April 4th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
Clashes in the Atbaa area of Daraa left three civilians and two soldiers dead,
according to the Observatory.
In Idlib, heavy fighting took place on the outskirts of the town of Taftanaz,
where five civilians, four rebels and seven soldiers were killed amid heavy
machinegun fire and shelling, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
Clashes killed two civilians elsewhere in the province.
In central Homs, 10 civilians were killed in shelling and five others died in
fighting elsewhere in the province.
With international concern at the situation growing, a draft UN Security
Council statement was drawn up asking Syria to respect an April 10 deadline
to halt its military operations in protest cities, according to a copy of
the text seen by AFP.
The draft also urges the Syrian opposition to cease hostilities within 48
hours after the Assad’s regime makes good on its pledges.
It also calls on all parties to respect a two-hour daily humanitarian pause,
as called for in Annan’s plan.
Negotiations on the text – distributed by Britain, France and the United
States – began on Tuesday. France’s UN envoy Gerard Araud said he hoped it
would be adopted late Wednesday or on Thursday.
Russia, Assad’s veto-wielding ally in the Council, has rejected the idea of a
deadline, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying “ultimatums and
artificial deadlines rarely help matters.”
Washington said on Tuesday that Assad was failing to live up to pledges for a
truce.
“The assertion to Kofi Annan was that Assad would start implementing his
commitments immediately to withdraw from cities. I want to advise that we
have seen no evidence today that he is implementing any of those commitments,”
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
In Geneva, a spokesman for Annan said the office of the UN-Arab League envoy
expected a “UN advance team on the deployment of monitors to arrive in
Syria in the next 48 hours.”
In a briefing Monday to the Security Council, Annan sought a broad mandate for
the monitoring mission as he reported “no progress” on reaching a
ceasefire, according to diplomats.
Syria’s UN envoy, Bashar Jaafari, confirmed the April 10 date had been agreed “by
common accord” between Annan and his government.
Seeking to assuage some of the humanitarian concerns, Foreign Minister Walid
Muallem pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red
Cross mission as he met the organisation’s head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was
in Damascus to seek a daily ceasefire.
International Committee of the Red Cross chief Kellenberger, on his third
mission to Damascus since it launched a protest crackdown which the UN says
has killed more than 9,000 people, said ahead of his latest trip that he
would seek to secure a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.
Source: agencies
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