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| Daily News Brief March 28, 2012 |
Top of the Agenda: Syria's Assad Accepts UN Cease-Fire Proposal
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accepted a six-point peace plan to end his regime's year-long crackdown (NYT)
on anti-government protesters and opposition forces, said Kofi Annan,
the joint UN-Arab League envoy to Syria. The announcement came as Assad
made a rare visit to Homs, an opposition stronghold that has sustained
continued military attacks over the past months. But Assad's critics,
including the United States, remained skeptical of his intentions. At
the same time, Syrian soldiers targeted rebels taking cover along the
border with Lebanon. Syrian activists claimed fifty-seven people were
killed in clashes with government forces on Tuesday, while the UN
estimated the total number killed in the conflict since last March to be
more than 9,000.
Analysis
"First,
the diplomacy for which Annan is the point man is an agreed diplomacy,
to which all the major powers, as well as the Arab League and Syria's
neighbors, are committed. Since they have never managed to agree before,
this fragile unity is in itself worth something.
Second, if the conflict could be even partially and imperfectly
demilitarised, that would be, given the terrible and continuing level of
violence, a gain," says this Guardian editorial.
"Whether or not Annan's plan achieves a breakthrough remains to be seen. The Syrian leader has previously accepted deals in principle,
only to cherry pick the elements he chooses to implement.
Significantly, while Syrian state media focused on the president's tour
of an area 'agonized by heavily armed terrorist groups which terrorized
the inhabitants,' there was no mention of accepting Annan's plan,"
writes TIME's Rania Abouzeid.
"Russia
and China, which have seen their standing in the region suffer from
repeated vetoes in the Security Council, saw Annan's diplomatic overture
as a way out of their isolation. And Western powers, reluctant to
intervene militarily in Syria if diplomacy fails, are showing renewed interest in promoting a U.N. diplomatic effort to end the crisis," writes Colum Lynch for ForeignPolicy.com.
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