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April 19, 2012

Ban Accuses Syria's Assad of Flouting Ceasefire 
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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is accusing the regime of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad of failing to meet the terms of an
international peace plan. In a report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban
says Assad's forces are flouting the ceasefire with continued attacks on
opposition areas. Ban also called for the deployment of hundreds of
additional international monitors to observe the situation on the
ground. The head of the current monitoring team, U.N. Colonel Ahmad
Himmiche, called for time to build trust with all sides of the conflict.

Ahmad Himmiche: "Our mission is to establish liaison with the Syrian
security forces and also with other parties. To establish this liaison,
we need time, we need trust, we need to build confidence and trust
within all the parties in order to achieve our task. We are engaging.
Engaging I mean liaison with both the authorities and the other parties
and I think we will achieve our mandate, if you help us and explain our
mandate because there are a lot of expectations that are beyond a team
of thirty military observers."

 

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