Kofi Annan meets Syria leader Bashar Assad to try and revive ceasefire plan

In this photo dated May 29, 2012 released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, UN-Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria (JSE) Kofi Annan, left, listens to Syrian President Bashar Assad speak during a meeting in Damascus, Syria. / AP/SANA

(CBS/AP) DAMASCUS - International envoy Kofi Annan met Tuesday with Syrian President Bashar Assad in an effort to salvage Annan's faltering six-point plan to end more than 14 months of violence in the country.

CBS News' George Baghdadi reports that Annan arrived Monday after expressing horror at the massacre of more than 100 people - including dozens of women and children - in the villages which make up Houla in Syria's north last week.

It wasn't immediately clear how the meeting between Annan and the embattled Syrian leader went.

The United Nations has said government forces fired shells and heavy artillery at residential areas in Houla, but the world body stopped short of blaming Assad's regime directly for all the killings.

Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general himself, said upon his arrival to the Syrian capital that those responsible for the massacre must be held to account, and urged "everyone with a gun" to abide by his six-point ceasefire plan.

Russia condemns Syria over massacre
Annan calls for peace as new Syria killings reported
Syria gov't denies fault in massacre

The United Nations human rights office said Tuesday that the global body's investigators had concluded that children were among almost 90 people summarily executed in Houla on Friday.

A spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said U.N. monitors found that less than 20 of the 108 people killed died from artillery fire.

Rupert Colville told reporters in Geneva that most of the other victims were summarily executed in two separate incidents. Activists had previously said that most of those killed in were the victims of pro-government thugs who stormed the area.

The Houla killings prompted sweeping international condemnation and the harshest language yet from Syrian ally Russia — potentially making it a turning point in the crisis that has killed more than 9,000 people.

Syrian Vice Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad told reporters Tuesday as he escorted the international envoy to the presidential palace that Damascus was committed to see Annan's plan succeed.

"We have done all the arrangements needed and we provided all the facilities so that the (U.N.) mission does what is necessary. There wasn't a single violation from our side, unlike the other party (rebel forces) which did not commit to the primary understanding with the U.N.," the Syrian official said.

Syrian opposition groups, the U.S. and its allies, and even the U.N. have rejected that argument, saying both the government and the rebels are guilty of violating the ceasefire agreement. The U.S. and its European allies have accused the Assad regime of using the pretext of the Annan plan as a means of continuing the vicious assault on Syrian citizens.

Miqdad, however, blamed the failure of Annan's plan to take hold squarely on "the opposition and the countries which are financing and arming the opposition."

[JohnMMSr]

Of course the UN is an ineffective and largely useless organization whose main task has become little more than trying to redistribute the wealth of the West.

However, I'd like to move to another point...

It's bad enough to see poor grammar and syntax contained in the body of an article, but when it actually makes it to the headline itself it's ridiculous.

CBS didn't name a writer, but one would think any reasonably educated professional writer (or editor) would be aware that the use of "try and" (as in "Kofi Annan meets Syria leader Bashar Assad to try and revive ceasefire plan") is grammatically incorrect. It should be "try to." The use of "try and revive" shows two separate actions from two consecutive verbs... to try and then to revive. The proper usage, "try to revive," is one verb (try) then being more specifically qualified with an infinitive phrase (to revive) with "revive" as the object of the infinitive.

Am I some kind of grammar-Nazi? No, I'm not. I just believe a professional writer (and editor) should know and do better.

Obviously they are victims of the post-Carter Department of Education's public school systems.

(I've always wondered myself why over 75% of the degrees help by employees of the Department of Education were in Behavioral Science and not in Education anyway.)

[Molly-Pchr]

How do you negotiate with a nut like Assad?

[jnostromo]

The UN is a useless organization....The religion of peace strikes again

[Nikos_Retsos]

The Kofi Annan peace plan for Syria is a misnomer, and it is akin to the proverbial mantra of "trying to fit a square peg in a round hole!" Simply stated, the West and the Sunni Arab states in the Gulf want Assad - an Allawite Shiite- out, and a Sunni-anti-Iranian regime in Syria. On the other side, Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah want Assad, or someone like him that will keep Syria in the anti-U.S., anti-Israel camp as Assad does! And neither camp is prepared to settle for anything less!

The only peace solution in Syria will be if the Russians force Assad to quit, and a provisional government from his Baath party takes over, and hold free elections under the U.N. supervision. In return for this move, Russia can demand that the U.S., Israel, and the Arab Gulf states stop funding and arming the Syrian opposition, and give up their plan to install an anti-Iranian regime in Damascus.

The civil war in Syria is not a matter of fighting between Assad and anti-Assad Syrians -as portrayed in the Western media. Foreign powers and states with their own plans to change the geopolitical mosaic in the Middle East are fueling the Syrian conflict, and that makes reconciliation among Syrians themselves impossible! Nikos Retsos, retired professor

[cedaredge]

Shows how ineffective Kofi is along with everybody else.Take Assad out!

[cedaredge]

frf