Syrian rebels call for peace plan to be declared a failure
(Read article summary)If the Free Syrian Army abandons the peace plan, which they warned yesterday they might do, any vestiges of restraint – on either side – could vanish.
• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
Syrian rebel forces are calling for the end of the United Nations peace plan for Syria, which would eliminate the only mechanism in place for instilling any sort of restraint on either side of the anti-government uprising that has become increasingly violent.
The peace plan includes a cease-fire, which has been repeatedly violated since its implementation in April but still has acted as something of a tempering force for both the government and the rebels. If the Free Syrian Army (FSA) abandons the peace plan, any last efforts at restraint could vanish.
FSA leader Col. Qassim Saadeddine said in a video message yesterday that the FSA would consider itself "no longer bound" by UN special envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan if President Bashar al-Assad's regime missed the deadline, BBC reports.
Citing last week's massacre in Houla, in which 108 people were killed, most of them by execution, he said "there is no more justification for us to unilaterally respect the truce because [President Bashar al-Assad] has buried Annan's plan," Agence France-Presse reports.
