June 1, 2012 (TSR) – Vitaly Churkin, permanent representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, said on Wednesday that both the Syrian government and the opposition are not cooperating in carrying out the six-point plan proposed by Kofi Annan, the joint special envoy of the UN and Arab League for Syria, to end the Syrian crisis at an early date.
“Unfortunately, we do not see tangible progress in the implementation of Kofi Annan’s plan,” Churkin said to the press here following the closed door consultations of the UN Security Council concerning the situation in Syria.
“And the point I made in the course of the consultations is that essentially nobody is implementing the Kofi Annan plan,” he said.
Early on Wednesday, the Security Council met to hear briefings from Annan’s deputy and Herve Ladsous, the UN under- secretary-general for peacekeeping operations, on the latest situation in Syria.
The six-point plan, which has been widely backed by the international community and accepted by the Syrian government, calls for the withdrawal of heavy weapons and troops from population centers, a daily halt in fighting for the delivery of humanitarian aid and treatment for the wounded, as well as talks between the government and opposition.
The UN-brokered ceasefire technically went into effect on April 12, but has not taken hold as violence continued unabated.
Most recently, more than 100 people were killed over the weekend in the city of Houla, while an additional 13 bodies were discovered by the UN observers on Tuesday in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour.
“There has been some sort of progress on the part of the Syrian government in terms of pulling some heavy weapons from the vicinity of cities but as we saw on Sunday from that horrible tragedy in Houla,” said Churkin. “Some heavy weapons were used to shell the city before the actual abhorrent mass killings started.”
Meanwhile, Churkin also said that as the clashes continue in Syria, “armed groups of the opposition continue to take every opportunity to get at government representatives, killing them, setting up mines.”
According to Churkin, all political developments remains stagnant, as the efforts of Anna have been exhausted.
“The political opposition has adamantly refused to enter into dialogue,” he said. “The larger opposition groups, like the Syrian National Council, kept calling for foreign armed intervention, calling for continuing armed struggle within Syria.”
Moreover, Churkin stressed that “Russia is dissatisfied with the current state of things, and we use every opportunity, every channel at our disposal, every avenue, in terms of improvement of the situation, in terms of making the Annan plan possible.”
