President Bashar al-Assad visited on Tuesday the
Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to inspect the printed and audio standard
copy of the Holy Quran which was set to be the standard for printing the
Holy Quran, SANA reported on Tuesday.
He listened
to members of the Permanent Committee for Holy Quran Affairs about the
stages of writing the copy which is considered the first of its kind in
the Islamic world, the state-run agency added.
"Assad hailed
the efforts exerted by the committee which is affiliated to the
Ministry of Religious Endowments and includes a number of top Islamic
scholars under the supervision of Dr. Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan
al-Buti.Russia said Tuesday it is ready to support a U.N. resolution endorsing Kofi Annan's plan for settling the Syrian crisis, signaling it is prepared to raise the pressure on its old ally."
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov said in remarks broadcast on Tuesday that Syria's leadership has made
"very many mistakes" that have aggravated the crisis in the
violence-torn Middle Eastern nation.
"We believe the Syrian leadership
reacted wrongly to the first appearance of peaceful protests and ... is making
very many mistakes," Lavrov told Russian radio station Kommersant-FM,
seeking to distance Moscow from the government.
Lavrov said that "the question of who
will lead Syria in a transition period" can only be decided in a dialogue
involving the government and its opponents and that demanding Assad resign as a
condition for such a dialogue is "unrealistic".
Meanwhile, an international human rights group accused Syria's
armed opposition on Tuesday of carrying out serious abuses, including the
kidnapping and torture of security forces, in a sign of the growing complexity
of the year-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch made Tuesday's
statement in an open letter to the opposition Syrian National Council. The
group stressed that many of the anti-government groups reported to be carrying
out abuses do not appear to belong to an organized command structure or to be
following orders from the Syrian National Council.
But Syria's opposition leadership has a responsibility
to speak out and condemn such abuses, Human Rights Watch said. The group also
said it has received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of
security force members and civilians.
SNC leaders did not immediately respond to calls by
The Associated Press seeking comment.
Turkey has brought forward to
April 1 the Istanbul "Friends of Syria" meeting, bringing together
mostly Arab and Western countries favoring stronger action against Assad's government, a Foreign Ministry official said on Tuesday. The
official told Reuters the meeting had been brought forward from April 2 for
scheduling reasons.
Rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad quit the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zor on Tuesday in the face of a fierce army assault, the latest in a string of setbacks for opposition forces.
Government troops also shelled residential areas in the cities of Hama and Homs, and the nearby town of Rastan, killing at least 18 people, while a soldier died in a raid on an army checkpoint in the south, opposition sources said.
The lightly armed rebel forces have been forced into retreat across the country in recent weeks, with the army using heavy armour to chase them from towns and cities, chalking up its latest victory in Deir al-Zor, which lies on the road to Iraq.
Furthermore, Syrian rebels have freed an army general abducted in the Damascus
suburb of Douma in return for prisoners and bodies of rebels and civilians held
by police, an opposition source familiar with the deal said.
Reuters/LBCI/AP