Syria peace deal nears collapse

A UN-brokered plan to stop the bloodshed in Syria has effectively collapsed after President Bashar Assad's government raised new, last-minute demands that the country's largest rebel group swiftly rejected.
The truce plan, devised by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, was supposed to go into effect on Tuesday, with a withdrawal of Syrian forces from population centres, followed within 48 hours by a ceasefire by both sides in the uprising against four decades of repressive rule by the Assad family.

But Syria's Foreign Ministry said that ahead of any troop pullback, the government needs written guarantees from opposition fighters that they will lay down their weapons.

The commander of the rebel Free Syrian Army, Riad al-Asaad, said that while his group is ready to abide by a truce, it does not recognise the regime "and for that reason we will not give guarantees".

Even before the setback, expectations were low that the Assad regime would honour the agreement.
Russia, an Assad ally that supports the cease-fire plan, may now be the only one able to salvage it. The rest of the international community, unwilling to contemplate military intervention, has little leverage over Syria.
In recent days, instead of preparing for a withdrawal, regime troops have stepped up shelling attacks on residential areas, killing dozens of civilians every day in what the opposition described as a frenzied rush to gain ground.

Meanwhile, Turkey said Syrian forces have fired across the border at a refugee camp, wounding a Turkish translator and at least two Syrian refugees.
A government official said Turkey immediately summoned the Syrian charge d'affaires and asked that the fire be halted.

He said two refugees and one Turkish citizen, a translator, were wounded inside the camp near the town of Kilis in the south-western Gaziantep province.