Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, said on Thursday he would urge President Bashar al-Assad and his foes to stop fighting and seek a political solution, drawing angry rebukes from dissidents. "The killing has to stop and we need to find a way of putting in the appropriate reforms and moving forward," Annan, who is due in Damascus on Saturday, said in Cairo.
One Syrian opposition activist voiced alarm at Annan's call for dialogue, saying it sounded "like a wink at Bashar" that would only encourage Assad to "crush the revolution". On a separate mission to Syria, UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said she was "devastated" by the destruction she had seen in the Baba Amr district of Homs city and wanted to know what had happened to its residents, who endured a 26-day military siege before rebel fighters withdrew a week ago.
Amos is the first senior foreign official to visit Baba Amr since the government assault, which activists said ended in reprisals by Assad loyalists. A Syrian Arab Red Crescent team that accompanied her there on Wednesday found few inhabitants among the ruins.
As world pressure on Syria mounted, the deputy oil minister announced his defection, the first by a senior civilian official since the start of a year-long popular uprising against Assad, whose Baath party marked 49 years in power on Thursday. The minister, Abdo Hussameldin, 58, said he knew his change of sides would bring persecution on his family. The Syrian pound fell as low as 100 pounds to the dollar from about 47 a year ago. Dealers said it had plunged about 13 percent in the last 24 hours on fears of US military action.