...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
regime even without U.N. Security Council approval, in a video posted online on Thursday.
General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, who heads the SLA military council, charged that the government, unlike rebel fighters had failed to respect a ceasefire deal agreed with U.N.-Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
mediator Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...He called for "the formation of a military alliance of countries friendly to the Syrian people, without U.N. Security Council approval, to carry out surgical strikes on key installations of the regime."
Russia and China have blocked strong Security Council action on the 13-month-old crisis in Syria.