UN observers to monitor truce in Syria

DAMASCUS - The UN advance team of several observers, who arrived here late Sunday, are ready to begin monitoring the truce brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan as sporadic violence across the country was reported.

"We are going to organize ourselves in order to do our task as soon as possible," Moroccan Colonel Ahmed Himmiche, head of the advance team?said Monday.

"I'm very optimistic ... all peace keepers are optimistic," Himmiche said, adding that he is hopeful that the mission will succeed.

Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said that the mission had started setting up operating headquarters on Monday and reaching out to the Syrian government and the opposition forces so that both sides fully understand the role of the UN observers.

He also said that Annan will head for Doha, Qatar on Tuesday to participate in an Arab League meeting on Syria.

Earlier, the UN Security Council unanimously decided to send an advance team of up to 30 unarmed military observers to Syria in order to monitor a ceasefire between the Syrian government forces and armed opposition fighters.

The other observers are expected to arrive in the next few days. The team will be backed with other batches of observers over the next period, and the total number of observers may eventually reach 250.

Sporadic violence has been reported across Syria during the truce, which started Thursday.

On Monday, at least nine people, including two officers, were killed in separate incidents across Syria, state-run SANA news agency said.

Two army officers were killed and two others were injured in separate attacks carried out by armed groups against law-enforcement forces in southern Daraa and northern Aleppo province.

In another attack, two children were killed when armed groups fired mortar shells at some neighborhoods of Aleppo, and four women were injured by the blast of a roadside bomb that went off in a suburb of Aleppo.

In northern Idlib province, armed groups attacked civilians and law-enforcement forces, leaving three soldiers killed, said SANA, adding that the authorities confronted the aggressors, and killed and arrested a number of them.

Meanwhile, the authorities found two dead bodies of law-enforcement members, who were kidnapped a day earlier in Idlib.

On the opposition side, activists reported Monday intense shelling of rebel strongholds in central Homs province for the third consecutive day.

They said that at least six people were killed in the central city of Hama, four in Idlib and at least other four in Homs.

The activists' account couldn't be independently verified.

Violence and death toll have to some extent declined in comparison with the previous stage, but clashes and attacks have still occured during the fragile five-day truce.

"Much of Syria is quieter... We know the ceasefire is not complete but it appears as though the violence is down significantly," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday.

"We want to see a political process begin, but if violence is renewed... then we're going to have to get back to planning what our next steps" are, she added.

Also on Monday, the French Foreign Ministry confirmed that the first meeting of the international working group on sanctions against Syria will take place in Paris on Tuesday.

"We must continue to exert strong pressure on the Syrian regime in order to ensure that it complies with its obligations in accordance with ?Annan's plan" and ends the violence, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters, citing continued violence in Syria.

For his part, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moom urged Monday the Syrian government "to guarantee freedom of access, freedom of movement (of observers) within the country," adding opposition forces "should also fully cooperate."

He said though the ceasefire is "very fragile ", it was essential that it held so that an "inclusive political dialogue can continue."

In Moscow, Russian State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Alexei Pushkov said Monday the Syrian government and the opposition had all chances to meet at the negotiation table if UN-Arab League envoy Annan's plan was not violated.

He said dialogue between the conflicting parties in Syria was "inevitable," and the constitutional referendum in Syria, in which about 90 percent of people supported a new constitution, offered a way out of the current crisis in the strife-torn country.

According to the Syrian Foreign Ministry, Foreign Minister Walid al- Moallem was expected to arrive in China on Monday for a two-day visit to brief Beijing on Damascus' efforts regarding the ceasefire. There is no further reports on the visit.