The head of the observer team, Col. Ahmed Himmiche, suggested Tuesday before leaving a hotel in Damascus, that it would take time to get to the hardest hit areas. Work in Syria is "difficult," he said in Damascus.
"There should be coordination and planning. ... We must walk step by step as it's not an easy process."
France will host a foreign
ministers meeting on Thursday in Paris, including U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, to discuss the fragile ceasefire in Syria, a French official
said on Tuesday.
The meeting, which the foreign ministers of
Turkey and Qatar will also attend, aims to increase pressure on Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad to meet his commitments under a U.N.-backed peace
plan, the official said.
Any violation of a U.N.-backed peace plan by Syria should be met with a swift and firm response by the United Nations Security Council, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on Tuesday.
Addressing an international conference on Syria in the French capital, Juppe also said that Western sanctions on the country were having an effect and its foreign currency reserves had been halved.
Meanwhile, UN-Arab Envoy Kofi Annan announced on Tuesday that he will head to Doha on Tuesday to take
part in the Arab ministerial meeting on Syria following which he is expected to
hold talks with Arab League Chief Nabil Araby.
Also on Tuesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid
Moualem arrived in Beijing as unrelenting bloodshed in Syria
complicated preparations by a team of U.N. observers to monitor a truce that
has brought only short-lived breaks in violence since President Bashar al-Assad
pledged to enforce it last week.
Moualem arrived late evening on
Tuesday at the invitation of Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to discuss
with Beijing the cease-fire brokered by Kofi Annan, international envoy to
Syria, said state news agency Xinhua.
Meanwhile, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said he is asking the European Union to provide helicopters and planes for the observers because of the ongoing violence and the long distances monitors would have to travel.
Ban portrayed the violence as only "sporadic." But he suggested an observer mission of 250 members, as envisioned originally, may not be big enough "considering the current situation and considering the vastness of the country."
Syrian activists reported on Tuesday that the regime has widened shelling attacks on opposition targets in another sign that the U.N.-brokered cease-fire is unraveling.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said tanks shelled the southern town of Busra al-Harir on Tuesday, killing five people.
The group added that shelling resumed in the central city of Homs, where the Khaldiyeh neighborhood was targeted.
Homs has been under continuous attack with only a brief respite on Thursday the day the cease-fire formally took effect.
The truce is part of a plan by special envoy Kofi Annan to end the Syrian government's crackdown on a 13-month uprising and launch talks on the country's political future. Escalating violations have dimmed already low expectations the truce would hold.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that unspecified external forces are seeking to undermine efforts to bring peace to Syria.
"They are doing this by delivering arms to the Syrian opposition and stimulating the activity of rebels who continue to attack both government facilities and ... civilian facilities on a daily basis," Lavrov said in televised remarks.
Reuters/AP