U.N. observer team on standby to enter Syria

(AP) GENEVA - An advance team of U.N. observers is ready to enter Syria, where the cease-fire has been "relatively respected" despite government troops and heavy weapons still in cities and continuing abuses, the spokesman for international envoy Kofi Annan said Friday.

The advance team is "standing by to board planes and to get themselves on the ground as soon as possible" once the U.N. Security Council gives approval for the mission as hoped when it meets later Friday, Annan's spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi told a news conference.

Annan has asked the 15-nation Security Council to approve sending a U.N. observer mission to Syria as soon as possible. The council's draft resolution being taken up Friday would authorize an advance element of up to 30 unarmed military observers.

The resolution being considered also would demand the government ensure their "full and unimpeded freedom of movement throughout Syria" and guarantee the mission's ability to interview any individual "freely or in private."

It also would demand that President Bashar Assad's government withdraw its troops and heavy weapons from population centers, and reiterates its call for unimpeded access for humanitarian workers.

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The demands are part of Annan's six-point plan to stop the slide toward civil war and launch talks on a political transition.

If the council gives its approval Friday, Fawzi said that the advance team would quickly prepare the way for a full mission — which would require an additional Security Council approval — of up to 250 observers on the ground.

"And then next week, if the cease-fire holds, and we hope it will, and if it turns into a genuine cessation of hostilities and of violence of all kinds and all forms by both sides, while the advance team is working effectively on the ground, then the council could authorized a full-fledged observer mission, with all the capacities needed, to support on the ground, the implementation of the six-point plan."

Syria's opposition, meanwhile, called for widespread protests on Friday as a test of Assad's commitment to the U.N.-brokered cease-fire that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Geneva is so fragile that a single gunshot could derail it.

Regime forces halted heavy shelling and other major attacks in line with the truce that began at dawn Thursday, but tanks and troops remained that could dissuade opponents from gathering in the open.

Fawzi quoted Annan as telling the council during its two-hour closed-door briefing Thursday that "the continued presence of Syrian armed forces, including armor, in and around population centers, must end immediately. Violence in all its forms, including arbitrary arrests, torture and abductions, must stop."

Fawzi also quoted Annan as telling the council "that we need eyes on the ground, in light of the fragile calm that appears to be prevailing. We need eyes on the ground quickly to observe and monitor the situation."

Syria's approval for the U.N. mission also is needed, Fawzi said, as is customary with non-military political operations that do not mandate any specific actions.

"The Syrian government has expressed its desire to see Mr. Annan's six-point plan succeed," Fawzi said. "The six-point plan includes a provision for a U.N.-supervision mechanism.

"There is no ambiguity there," he said. "Our understanding is the Syria government agrees to the deployment of a U.N. observer mission."