BEIRUT — Syrian government forces Thursday appeared largely to have ended their attacks on anti-government strongholds, adhering to a United Nations-brokered cease-fire.
But the United States, France and others seeking the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad said the government has yet to implement a provision in the U.N. plan that called for the country’s military to return to its barracks, and the U.S. repeated calls for Assad to step down.
Anti-Assad activists reported at least three deaths at the hands of Syrian security forces Thursday, along with a number of arrests.
The official Syrian government news service, SANA, reported at least two government sympathizers killed — a police officer who died when the bus he was in was bombed near Aleppo, wounding 24 others, and a Baath party official in southern Daraa province who was shot eight times when he left his home to buy bread.
President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy held a video conference, after which the White House said the two leaders had “condemned the violence perpetrated by the (Assad) regime against its own people and noted that the regime had yet to fully implement the agreement.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomed the “apparent halt in violence,” but she said it was not enough.
U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, the author of the cease-fire plan, gave a private briefing to the Security Council and reportedly called for approval of envoys to monitor the cease-fire’s progress. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said that without monitors, “it was difficult to assess the situation on the ground.”
“Even a small gunshot may give both sides the pretext to engage in another fighting,” Ban said.
What happens next is difficult to predict. The Syrian government warned Wednesday that it would respond with force to any attack by the Free Syrian Army, the name taken by the loosely organized and lightly armed army defectors and volunteers who took up arms against the government, and activists said they hoped for widespread demonstrations today after prayer services.
