Annan sending team to discuss Syria monitors

Kofi Annan, joint special envoy on Syria for the United Nations and Arab League, is sending a team to Damascus early next week to discuss a proposal to deploy international monitors there, his spokesman said on Friday.   

"I can confirm that one of the suggestions in the proposals is a mechanism for monitors," Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters in Geneva, commenting on a Syrian foreign ministry statement carried on the official news agency SANA.   

"He is sending a team - a technical mission - to Damascus early next week to discuss details of this mechanism and how to implement other elements of the proposals," Fawzi said.   

Annan is due to brief the Security Council from Geneva at 1400 GMT on Friday.


Turkey is considering setting up a "security" or "buffer zone" along its border with Syria and may withdraw its ambassador to Damascus after Turkish citizens inside the neighboring country return home, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.
   
The Turkish Foreign Ministry called on all Turkish citizens inside Syria to return to Turkey as soon as possible and said it was closing the consular section of its Damascus embassy next week.

Meanwhile, Russia's envoy to the Middle East said on Friday that "Statements from Western and Arab countries that President Bashar al-Assad's rule is illegitimate are counterproductive to establishing peace in Syria."  

"The Syrian people should determine who will lead their country and so the opinion of some of our foreign partners will hardly foster a solution," Mikhail Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister, told a news conference.   

The U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan was due to brief the United Nations Security Council on Friday about his talks in Damascus and proposals to end the violence.    

Western diplomats expressed pessimism in private over Annan's chances of success.    

Syria said on Wednesday it had given a "positive" response to Annan's approach. A Middle Eastern diplomat characterized the reply from Damascus as "not a 'No'". But a senior Western diplomat in the region said Damascus had spurned Annan's ideas.

Earlier in the day, Syrian opposition activists sent online appeals on Friday to call for demonstrating under the slogan “immediate military intervention” against the Assad regime.

Activists reported that Syrian troops have clashed with army defectors in several areas near the capital of Damascus.
 
The clashes in the Damascus suburbs of Qatana, Dumair and Tal came six weeks after President Bashar Assad's forces retook areas around the capital in a major military operation.
    
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clash in Tal lasted until the early hours of Friday. The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees said the battles began Thursday.
  
The earlier drive to retake the Damascus suburb was followed by regime offensives to expel rebel forces from the Baba Amr district of Homs and Idlib in northern Syria.