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PARIS: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and 13 fellow foreign ministers were to hold Syria talks in Paris on Thursday, which France says will send a “strong” call to the regime to abide by a peace plan.
Syrian troops continued to pound rebel strongholds on Wednesday as the regime sought to reassure an increasingly sceptical world that it is committed to a week-old ceasefire.
Washington said that a team of UN observers was not being given the necessary freedom to properly monitor a halt to hostilities.
“The obstacles to the UN observers' mission that Damascus is putting in place and the Syrian regime's continued repression, contrary to its commitments, calls for a strong reaction from the international community,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in a statement Wednesday.
Announcing the meeting, Juppe said the foreign ministers of the United States, Germany, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar and Saudi Arabia would be among those taking part in the meeting aimed at ratcheting up the diplomatic pressure on Bashar al-Assad's regime.
The assembled ministers would, he said, send Damascus “a message of firmness and support for Kofi Annan,” the joint UN-Arab League envoy pushing the peace plan in Syria.
Asked if Russia would attend, foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said the meeting “is not a substitute for the work of the (UN) Security Council” so not all council members had been invited.
Some of the ministers expected in Paris were already in the region for Nato talks in nearby Brussels on Wednesday.
Juppe met more junior officials this week from 50 of the countries that have imposed sanctions on Assad's regime in a bid to stop the violent repression of a year-old popular revolt that has left more than 11,000 dead.
After talks in Paris, the countries expressed “strong disapproval of any financial or other support, in particular the continuation of arms sales to the Syrian regime”, in a clear reference to Russia.
