Pencilneckal-Assad's
Trampler of Homs...
regime Friday in a new test of its readiness to honour a peace plan.
UN chief
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
has already stated that the Syrian government has so far failed to honour the ceasefire plan.
Government forces renewed bombardment of the flashpoint central city of Homs after security forces killed seven civilians on Thursday, bringing to more than 120 the civilian corpse count since a promised ceasefire took effect more than a week ago, human rights
...which often include carefully measured allowances of
freedomat the convenience of the state...
monitors said.
An advance team of UN military observers resumed work bolstered by the signing with the government on Thursday of a protocol governing their mission to monitor the six-point plan brokered by international envoy 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...But Annan's front man acknowledged Friday that the situation was "not good".
"It's a very fragile ceasefire," Ahmad Fawzi told news hounds.
Ki-moon urged the UN Security Council to take "early action" to bolster the mission although he acknowledged that boosting its numbers to 300 was "not a decision without risk."
Defiance
Opposition activists called for a show of defiance against Al-Assad's regime for the main weekly protests on the Mohammedan day of prayer and rest.
"We will win and Assad will be defeated," activists adopted as the slogan on their Syrian Revolution 2011 Facebook Page that has been a major motor of the 13-month uprising which monitors say has left more than 11,000 people dead.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the UN observer mission needed to be able to guarantee Syrians the freedom to protest.
"We need observers on the ground, but properly equipped observers with helicopters that can ensure the right to protest. It's extremely important. The day this freedom is guaranteed, the regime will fall," he said.
But the head of the small observer advance team, Col Ahmed Himmiche of Morocco, said the mission would not be attending demonstrations on Friday for fear that "our presence is used for an escalation."
"Today, we have other tasks. We are going to meet civilians and representatives of organizations," Himmiche told AFP as his team prepared to leave their Damascus
...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
hotel.
The UN chief said there was "deeply troubling evidence" that the government was pursuing its deadly crackdown despite agreeing to halt violence.
"The past few days, in particular, have brought reports of renewed and escalating violence, including the shelling of civilian areas, grave abuses by government forces and attacks by gangs," Ban said.
The protocol signed on Thursday will pave the way for the UN observers to fan out across the country.
The advance party has visited the Daraa region, south of Damascus but it has not so far been able to visit Homs where rebel neighbourhoods have come under deadly bombardment, Ban said.