Turkey plans to host Syria talks in April, Annan expects Syria response on Tuesday

Turkey plans to host a meeting of "Friends of Syria", grouping mostly Arab and Western governments, on April 2 to find ways to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into halting a brutal crackdown on unrest, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday.    

More than 50 countries were represented at the first meeting of foreign ministers from the group in Tunis in late February.    

Erdogan made the announcement a day after meeting U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan in Ankara, following the envoy's visit to Damascus over the weekend for talks with Assad.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said he was expecting to hear on Tuesday from the Syrian government on "concrete proposals" which he made to end nearly a year of violence during his weekend talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.    

Annan has not disclosed what those proposals entailed.    

Syria's ambassador to Moscow said on Monday, however, that the discussion between Assad and Annan had echoed 'five principles' for a Syrian settlement agreed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Arab League foreign ministers in Cairo on Saturday.    

Speaking after meeting Annan, Syrian National Council (SNC) leader Burhan Ghalioun said the aim was for a political and diplomatic solution, otherwise foreign governments would deliver on promises to supply weapons to rebel forces.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan accused the Syrian regime of waging a “genocide war” against its people, urging the Arab League to take prompt actions to “stop this massacre”. The brotherhood stressed that the Arab League’s hesitance in light of the Russian and Chinese vetoes and the Western hypocrisy gave the Syrian regime the green light to move forth with the crimes against humanity.

“It [the regime] is using the most modern weapons in its arsenal to destroy villages and towns on the heads of their inhabitants”, the brotherhood added.

It was earlier reported that 10 Syrian soldiers were killed in an attack executed by defectors early Tuesday morning in the town of Maaret al-Numan located in Idlib province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The observatory added that violent clashes erupted between the Syrian army and armed defectors outside the town of Barra in Jabal al-Zawiya. “Syrian forces are using heavy weaponry to target the town”, the observatory said.