More than 70 foreign ministers from Western and Arab nations backing the Syrian uprising are meeting in Istanbul for talks geared toward pressuring Damascus to implement a right away cease-fire and urging the opposition to unify its scattered ranks.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called at the international community to support the Syrian people's "right to self-defense" if the United Nations fails to behave to forestall President Bashar al-Assad's bloody crackdown on an anti-government uprising.
Kofi Annan's Six-Point Peace Plan
- A Syrian-led political process to deal with the aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people.
- A U.N. supervised end to armed violence by all parties in Syria.
- Timely humanitarian assistance in all areas laid low with fighting.
- Increasing the pace and scale of release of arbitrarily detained people.
- Ensuring freedom of movement for journalists.
- Respecting freedom of association and the best to illustrate peacefully.
Significantly, China and Russia should not represented at Sunday's gathering. The 2 countries have twice protected the Assad government from censure by the U.N. Security Council, fearing this type of step could lead on to foreign military intervention. Iran, a detailed Syrian ally, was not invited.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials attending the "Friends of Syria" conference are expected to insist that Assad abide by the peace plan proposed by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
President Assad, whose foreign ministry has declared the revolt crushed, has said he accepts Annan's six-point proposal. But his comments were treated with skepticism by Western and Arab governments as fighting at the ground continues.
Syria's political opposition, which remains divided, has not yet formally endorsed the Annan plan, and rebel fighters say they won't put down their arms until government troops and heavy weapons are withdrawn from populated areas.
On Saturday, Clinton attended a "strategic forum" between the us and the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council in Saudi Arabia to debate bringing an end to Syria's crackdown and countering the growing threat of Iran.
The U.S. remains against arming Syria's rebels, like some Gulf states have proposed, and is instead working to unify the country's splintered opposition and find methods to get humanitarian aid into the rustic.
Ahead of Sunday's meeting, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the Annan plan is the "minimum" of what Syria must do "urgently and right now."
Meanwhile, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA that government shelling and clashes between security forces and protesters left 25 people dead Saturday.
The United Nations says greater than 9,000 people was killed since unrest in Syria began greater than a year ago. Â
In a letter to the U.N. Friday, Syria said acts by "armed terrorist groups" had brought about the deaths of greater than 6,100 people in Syria because the start of the uprising.
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Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
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