Syria: Opposition ready to sign truce
Syrian opposition announced that they were ready to sign a truce with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The truce plan, devised by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, was supposed to go into effect on Tuesday, with a withdrawal of Syrian forces from population centres, followed within 48 hours by a ceasefire by both sides in the uprising against four decades of repressive rule by the Assad family.
But on Sunday, Syria's Foreign Ministry said that ahead of any troop pullback, the government needs written guarantees from opposition fighters that they will lay down their weapons and stop bombardment in the residential areas, where government plans to withdraw its troops and military equipment.
At the same time, Damascus is trying to extort guarantees from a number of regional countries that financed the armament of Syrian rebels.
