UN Council demands Syria carry out peace plan

Following intense negotiations between the major powers, Russia and China signed on to a Western-drafted text which calls on President Bashar al-Assad to work toward a cessation of hostilities and a democratic transition.

The presidential statement, which carries less weight than a formal resolution, gives strong backing to a six-point plan that Annan put to Assad in talks in Damascus this month. It also gave a veiled warning of future international action.

But amid the UN debate, Syrian army troops rained shells on the Homs district of Khaldiyeh on Wednesday, as the toll from two days of bombardment rose to at least 19 dead and dozens wounded, activists said.

“Khaldiyeh is being bombed, with shells and rockets, for a second day,” Hadi Abdullah of the Syrian Revolution General Commission told AFP, reached by telephone from Beirut.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said at least five civilians were killed and dozens wounded in Wednesday’s shelling, a day after 14 civilians were killed in the same district. It said two children were among the latest deaths.

The Security Council statement called on “the Syrian government and opposition to work in good faith with the envoy towards a peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis and to implement fully and immediately his initial six-point proposal.”

It said Annan should regularly update the council on his efforts. “In the light of these reports, the Security Council will consider further steps as appropriate,” the statement adds.

The council also “expresses its full support” for Annan’s efforts to facilitate a Syrian-led transition to a “a democratic, plural political system” — which some diplomats said put additional political pressure on Annan.

In a sign of the new diplomatic urgency over Syria, the Security Council also agreed on a press statement, proposed by Russia, which “condemned in the strongest terms” bomb attacks in Damascus and Aleppo at the weekend.

Russia and China have vetoed two resolutions on Syria and their opposition to any tough action against Assad has left the major powers in deadlock on ways to end the bloodshed in Syria, where the UN says well over 8,000 people have been killed in the last year.

Britain’s UN ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, said the statement was agreed unanimously by the council, despite its divisions.

“This sends precisely the strong and united message to the Syrian government and all other actors in Syria that they need to respond and respond quickly and immediately to the six point plan,” said Lyall Grant, who formally read the statement as president of the council for March.

In Washington US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised the UN statement on Syria and warned Assad to carry out the peace plan or face “increasing pressure.”

“To President Assad and his regime, we say, along with the rest of the international community, take this path, commit to it, or face increasing pressure and isolation,” Clinton told reporters.

European countries still want to press for a full binding Security Council resolution on the crisis in Syria however.

French envoy Gerard Araud called it “a small step by the Security Council in the right direction.”

“A resolution is still on the table and we hope we will manage to obtain a Security Council resolution,” Araud told reporters.

There were “very tough” negotiations with Russia and its allies on the text of the statement, a diplomat involved in the talks said.

A lot of the language was toned down with “further measures” within seven days of the statement changed to “further steps” with no deadline.

But Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov welcomed the Security Council’s move.

“The document does not contain any ultimatums, threats or assertions about who is guilty,” Lavrov said in Berlin after talks with German leaders.

Syrian opponents said they feared a repeat of the month-long battering that killed hundreds in the Baba Amr district of Homs before the army moved in on March 1 after a pullout by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), made up mostly of army deserters.

Thousands of residents who fled Baba Amr and other neighborhoods of the city in central Syria had taken refuge in Khaldiyeh, “the last front left” in Homs.

Also in Homs, activists uncovered 39 bodies in the Rifai sector of town, said Abdullah. They had probably been killed at the same time as the 48 women and children whose mutilated bodies the FSA found in Homs on March 12.

At the time, the opposition charged it was a massacre carried out by government forces after their capture of Baba Amr, while Damascus said it was the work of “armed terrorist gangs,” which it blames for the year-long revolt.