UN mulls Syria peacekeeping plan

The United Nations is planning for a peacekeeping force in Syria should a ceasefire in that country take hold and pending a Security Council mandate, the UN peacekeeping chief has said.“I would confirm that, of course, we are giving a lot of thought to what would happen if and when a political solution or at least a cease-fire would emerge,’’ Herve Ladsous told reporters on Monday. He said it was too early to say how many peacekeepers might be deployed.Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Sunday as part of his push for a ceasefire between rebels and government forces for the Eid al-Adha holiday, which begins on Friday.Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, said Assad’s government supported the truce proposal but would not commit to halting fire during a the four-day holiday until Western countries and their Gulf allies stop supporting rebels and halt their weapons supplies to the anti-government fighters.Brahimi told reporters, following a closed-door meeting, that he also had held talks earlier with opposition groups inside and outside the country and received “promises’’ but not a “commitment’’ from them to honor the ceasefire.Brahimi replaced Kofi Annan as envoy to Syria after the former UN secretary-general resigned last August, frustrated by a lack of progress, failed ceasefire and rejected six-point peace plan.Sanctions ‘hurting children’Other Western nations including the United States and European Union have imposed sanctions on Syria which the government claims are harming the country’s children.