Hopes fade for Syria peace plan
A UN-brokered plan to stop the bloodshed in Syria has effectively collapsed after President Bashar Assad's government raised new, last-minute demands that the country's largest rebel group swiftly rejected.
The truce plan, devised by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, was supposed to go into effect tomorrow, 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.
