Fighting in Syria continues as Arab leaders gathered for summit

PanARMENIAN.Net - Fighting between Syrian security forces and rebels killed at least 13 people on Thursday, March 29, as Arab leaders gathered at a summit in Baghdad to press Damascus for rapid implementation of a peace plan that President Bashar al-Assad has said he can accept, Reuters reports.

Arab leaders, who appear to have backed away from their call on Assad to step aside and hand over to a deputy, remain split over how to deal with the continuing violence.

Pre-empting the summit, Syria said on Wednesday it would reject any initiatives from the Arab League, which suspended Syria in November, and said it would deal only with individual Arab states.

In Istanbul, Syrian opposition representatives met to try to settle deep internal disputes before the arrival of Western foreign ministers for a "Friends of Syria" conference on Sunday to map out where the year-old uprising is heading.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the violence, reported that eight members of the security forces were wounded in a clash with armed defectors in Dael, in the southern province of Deraa.

Syria's state news agency SANA said that two colonels were assassinated in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday.

"Four terrorists shot Abdul Karim al-Rai and Fuad Shaaban ... while they were on their way to work," SANA said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also attending the meeting in Baghdad, has said Assad's acceptance of the Annan deal, which has met with strong skepticism in the West, "is an important initial step that could bring an end to the violence."

He urged Assad to "put those commitments into immediate effect."