Annan peace plan ‘last hope for Syria’ says group of 14

The “Friends of Syria” coalition partners have called a UN-backed peace plan the “last hope” to resolve the crisis and said they would do all they could to help it succeed.

“Every day that passes means dozens of new Syrian civilian deaths,” a statement issued last night said after talks in Paris involving senior diplomats from a dozen or so like-minded governments. “It is not time to prevaricate. It is time to act.”

Alluding to fears that Syria could descend into all-out civil war if the plan worked out by international envoy Kofi Annan failed, the draft added: “Though fragile, the Annan mission represents a last hope.”

The 14-nation group – including the United States, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar – called on the Syrian authorities to end all violence immediately and said it would work to ensure the success of Mr Annan’s Arab League-UN plan: “If this were not to happen, the UN Security Council and international community would have to look at other options,” the statement said.

France said UN observers must be deployed quickly to Syria and that failure of the plan would put the country on a path to a civil war that could spill out into the surrounding region.

“We cannot wait, time is short,” foreign minister Alain Juppe told the meeting. “The observers must be deployed fast and must be able to act without obstacles.”

The statement said the group wanted “to put an end to 13 months of a bloodbath that has caused more than 11,000 deaths, tens of thousands of prisoners and hundreds of thousands of refugees and destabilised the region”.

Before the meeting, Mr Juppe said at least 300 to 400 UN observers would be required in Syria and that foreign powers would discuss new ways to end the violence in case the mission failed to consolidate a week-old truce. Damascus and the UN agreed yesterday on the terms for observers to enter the country to monitor a ceasefire, arranged more than a year after the start of an uprising against president Bashar al-Assad.

But many western powers remain sceptical the mission will have the clout it needs. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Syria had not fully withdrawn troops and heavy weapons from towns, as it had promised under Mr Annan’s six-point plan to end the conflict and begin a political dialogue.

Mr Juppe’s estimate of the number of observers required was somewhat higher than the 250 that Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem has said is “reasonable”.

Mr Juppe said Paris had absolutely no trust in the Syrian leader or his government. While the truce has held in some parts of Syria, the army has kept up attacks on rebels in several opposition areas. The Syrian government says it is under attack from armed “terrorist groups”.

“I am convinced that if there are several hundred observers, allowed to move around freely, and if Syria allows foreign media into the country, then things will drastically and fundamentally change,” Mr Juppe said.