Syria challenged the United Nations chief over the size and scope of a UN truce monitoring mission on Wednesday, resisting a larger presence as its army shelled targets in the city of Homs in violation of the cease-fire.
Despite the seven-day-old truce agreement between government and rebel forces, explosions rocked the battered Khalidiyah quarter of Homs as the army resumed what has become a daily barrage of heavy mortar shelling, and plumes of black smoke drifted over the rooftops.
In northern Idlib province, six members of the security forces were killed by a bomb placed by an "armed terrorist group", state news agency SANA said. It was the second such attack in two days.
While the truce has held in some parts of Syria since President Bashar al-Assad pledged to enforce it last week, in strong opposition areas such as Homs, Hama, Idlib and Deraa, the army has kept up attacks on rebels, using heavy weapons in violation of the pledge by Damascus to pull back.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told a news conference in Beijing that no more than 250 truce monitors were needed, and they should come from what he called "neutral" countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all of which have been more sympathetic to Assad than the West and the Arab League states.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was due to present proposals for the next phase of the mission on Wednesday to the Security Council. He says more monitors are needed for credible supervision of the truce in a country the size of Syria in the 13th month of a conflict marked by extreme violence and over 10,000 deaths.
An advance party of a half a dozen UN peacekeepers in blue berets, led by Colonel Ahmed Himmiche of Morocco, toured towns near Damascus on Wednesday in two white UN Land Cruisers with a Syrian police escort.
In Erbin their convoy was mobbed by anti-government protesters who chanted demands to arm the rebel Free Syrian Army. A banner was plastered on one UN car reading: "The butcher continues killings. The observers continue observing, and the people continue with their revolution. We only bow to God."
With the flashpoint cities in Syria scattered over several hundred kilometres, Ban said he had asked the European Union if it can supply helicopters and planes to make the proposed monitoring mission rapidly and independently mobile, but Moualem said Syria would supply air transport if necessary.
A political source in neighbouring Lebanon said Damascus has already refused the use of UN helicopters.
The West has shown no desire to intervene militarily or push for the sort of robust peacekeeping mission that might require 50,000 troops or more. Russia and China, Syria's powerful friends on the Security Council, have made clear they would block a UN mandate to use force. They are likely to back Damascus as the terms of the mission are thrashed out later this week.
Assad says Syria is under attack by foreign-backed terrorist and that for their own safety, the unarmed observers would have to co-ordinate every step of their operation with Syrian security to protect them from "armed gangs".
The rebel Free Syrian Army fighting to topple Assad says it will stop shooting if he keeps his pledge to UN peace envoy Kofi Annan to withdraw tanks, heavy weapons and troops from urban areas, which critics say he clearly has not done since the truce took effect a week ago.
Apart from the shelling of targets in Homs, the city at the heart of the revolt, troops have swept towns and villages in raids to arrest suspected opponents of Assad. Activists say scores of people have been killed since the cease-fire officially came into force last Thursday.
Syria's official news agency SANA reported that four law enforcement members and a civilian were killed on Tuesday when "an armed terrorist group threw a bomb at a bus" in Aleppo, Syria's second largest city after the capital, Damascus.
Russia is also critical of Western and Arab states backing the Syrian opposition-in-exile in the "Friends of Syria" group.
France said it would host a foreign ministers meeting of the group on Thursday in Paris, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to discuss the fragile cease-fire.
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