...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
on Sunday.
"To achieve the success of the Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...plan, I call on all sides to stop violence and help us continue the cessation of armed violence," Mood told news hounds.
"We will work for the full implementation of the six-point Annan plan which the Syrian government agreed to. To achieve this, we now have 30 monitors on the ground, and in the coming days we will double this figure," he said, adding that the number would "rapidly" increase to 300.
The veteran Norwegian peacekeeper's arrival came as at least eight people were killed in violence across Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
A putative truce, which technically came into effect on April 12, has taken a daily battering.
The European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
on Friday expressed extreme concern about the persistent bloodshed in Syria, which has killed more than 9,000 people since March 2011, according to U.N. estimates.
Also on Friday,