Annan hails Syria 'calm,' foes trade charges

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said a ceasefire in Syria appeared to be holding today, as the Syrian government and its foes traded charges of trying to wreck his peace plan.

"I am encouraged by reports that the situation in Syria is relatively calm and that the cessation of hostilities appears to be holding," Annan said in a statement released ase briefed the UN Security Council on the crisis.

Annan added, however, that the Syrian government must carry out all the agreed peace plan which includes a withdrawal of troops and heavy weapons from cities.

"All parties have obligations to implement fully the six-point plan. This includes both the military provisions of the plan and the commitment to move to a political process," he said.

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, meanwhile, said plans were being drawn up to send observers to Syria, starting with the dispatch of a UN peacekeeping general as early as Friday.

"We are working to send an observer team as promptly as possible," Ban told a news conference in Geneva, saying today marked a "critical moment" in Annan's six-point plan for ending the violence.

"The world is watching however with sceptical eyes," he added, since previous promises made by the Syrian regime "have not been kept."

Renewed bloodshed today killed at least four people, putting to the test the hard-won ceasefire plan.

The opposition said regime forces killed three civilians and arrested dozens more in defiance of its undertaking to Annan to halt all military operations and withdraw troops from towns and cities by 6am (0300 GMT).

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said the epicentre of today's bloodshed was the flashpoint central region of Hama, long a focus of dissent to President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Spokesperson Basma Qoudmani called for peaceful demonstrations across Syria to test the government's readiness to accept public shows of dissent.

State media charged that it was the opposition who were jeopardising the long-awaited truce, accusing rebel fighters of bombing a bus ferrying troops to their base in Syria's second-largest city Aleppo.

"An armed terrorist group used an explosive device to target a bus transporting officers and non-commissioned officers to their unit in Aleppo. It killed a lieutenant colonel" and wounded 24 others, state news agency SANA said.

The interior ministry urged tens of thousands of people who fled the violence both inside and outside the country to return home and offered an amnesty to opposition gunmen without "blood on their hands."

The rebel Free Syrian Army, for its part, insisted it was "100 per cent committed" to the ceasefire in a conflict which monitors say has killed more than 10,000 people since March last year. "The regime is being elusive. We are 100 per cent committed to the ceasefire, but the regime is not abiding by it," FSA spokesman Colonel Kassem Saadeddine told AFP.

Saadeddine denied any involvement in the attack on the bus, dismissing the report as regime propaganda "to avoid fulfilling its commitment."

Among Syria's allies, China welcomed the regime's decision to uphold a "comprehensive ceasefire" describing it as a step towards a political solution. Russia called for more time.

US ambassador to the the United Nations Susan Rice said Assad's regime had intensified violence since it first committed to Annan's six-point plan on April 1.

"Its commitments therefore have little, if any, credibility ... given that track record," Rice said.