Geneva/Damascus: Syria has responded afresh to UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on his six-point proposals to end the crisis in the country, the former UN chief's spokesman said yesterday.
"The Syrian government has formally responded to the Joint Special Envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan's 6-point plan, as endorsed by the UN Security Council," he said in a statement. "Mr. Annan is studying it and will respond very shortly."
Annan's plan calls for a UN-supervised halt to fighting with the government pulling troops and heavy weapons out of protest cities, a daily two-hour humanitarian pause to hostilities and access to all areas affected by the fighting.
The special envoy also sought the release of people detained over the past year of the uprising against Al Assad in which the United Nations says far more than 8,000 people have been killed.
Syrian authorities had already given a first round of response to his proposals in mid-March, but the special envoy had sought more information from Damascus.
The latest response came after a team dispatched by Annan to Syria returned after three days of discussions with Syrian authorities.
Annan, who secured backing from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for his mediation efforts in their meeting Sunday, is due to visit Beijing today to brief leaders about his proposals.
Istanbul gathering
Meanwhile, Syrian forces sent shells crashing into a rebel neighbourhood of Homs city for a seventh straight day yesterday, monitors said, as Russia warned Damascus it must act to avoid civil war. The assault came as Syrian opposition factions were gathering in Istanbul in a bid to close ranks ahead of a Friends of Syria meeting in the same city on April 1, and Turkey announced the closure of its embassy in Damascus.
The Syrian crisis was also discussed in Seoul at a meeting between US President Barack Obama and Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC) activist group said Khaldiyeh was hit early yesterday by mortar rounds that set houses ablaze.
Five people were seriously wounded in the onslaught aimed at flushing out regime opponents, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group. The bombardment of Khaldiyah, a rebel bastion in the central city of Homs, began on Tuesday last week and has since killed dozens of people, according to monitors.
Clashes were also reported in the eastern hot spot of Deir Ezzor, in central Hama, in northwest Idlib and in southern Daraa province, cradle of the one-year uprising against Al Assad regime.
One person was reported killed by sniper fire in Maaret Al Numan, Idlib province.
The crackdown on dissent, which monitors say has seen more than 9,100 people killed since March 2011, was one of the top priority issues discussed between Obama and Medvedev at their meeting in South Korea.
After the talks, Obama acknowledged to reporters there had been disagreements in the past few months between the United
States and Russia. But he said both agreed "we should be supportive of Kofi Annan's efforts to end some of the bloodshed that is taking place in Syria", and that the goal was to have a "legitimate" government in Damascus.
In Ankara, a diplomatic source said Turkey's decision to close its mission in Damascus was linked to security conditions and that all diplomatic personnel had left the Syrian capital.
