Syria Vows to Work with Annan on Peace, Fight 'Terror'
Syria has vowed to cooperate with U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan while combatting "terrorism," its term for the country's anti-regime revolt, the foreign ministry said on Friday.
"The Syrian government is determined to protect its citizens by disarming the terrorists and continues to search for a peaceful solution to the crisis by cooperating with special envoy Kofi Annan," it said in a letter addressed to the United Nations, carried by state news agency SANA.
Annan, the former U.N. chief, has received a response to "concrete proposals" he submitted to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad last weekend but had more "questions and is seeking answers," his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said on Thursday.
He was to give a videoconference briefing from Geneva to the U.N. Security Council later on Friday on his talks with Assad, whose brutal crackdown on dissent has claimed more than 9,100 lives, according to activists.
In its letter, which was also addressed to the Security Council president but pointedly not to the Arab League, from which Syria has been suspended, Damascus called for outside help.
It called "on all countries and organizations which combat terrorism ... to apply pressure on all known parties to stop their support for terrorism and to halt the bloodshed" in Syria, in line with Security Council resolutions.
Damascus has "made the choice of national unity to resolve the problem it faces by bringing opposition and independent circles into the process ... of a restoring security and stability to Syria," it said.
Annan confirmed Wednesday that he had received a response from the Syrian regime but was seeking clarifications, in his mission to halt the bloodshed which Damascus blames on foreign-backed "terrorist gangs."
Source: Agence France Presse
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