Dubai: Tens of thousands of people protested across Syria as a deadly suicide bombing rocked the capital, killing 11 people, fuelling growing scepticism over the prospects of a UN-backed peace plan.
The United States, the EU and Nato said Syria has failed to live up to promises, while the Arab League said it will ask the Security Council to “review” its policy if the Bashar Al Assad regime fails to fully and immediately honour its commitment to a ceasefire.
Abdullah’s call
In Lisbon, Foreign Minister Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Friday said that the situation in Syria is not going in the right direction.
It is important to support Kofi Annan, UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, and his pivotal mission there in the light of the difficulties the mission is currently facing, Shaikh Abdullah said at a joint press conference with Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Portas. He also met and discussed bilateral relations with Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho.
A statement by Arab foreign ministers meeting at the League’s Cairo headquarters said the Damascus regime was negotiating while simultaneously “killing its own people.”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest, meanwhile, said, “We intend to continue to ramp up the international pressure against the Al Assad regime and encourage them in the strongest terms to live up to the obligations and commitments that they made in the context of the Kofi Annan plan.”
Despite a ceasefire in place since April 12, more than 300 people have reportedly been killed in the past two weeks. More than 65,000 Syrians have fled the bloody crackdown with most going to Turkey and Lebanon, the UN says.
A suicide bomber killed 11 people, some of them security men, outside a Damascus mosque yesterday.
The UN yesterday appointed Major General Robert Mood, a veteran of troublesome truces, to head the force monitoring the faltering ceasefire in Syria.
