Annan to meet Assad Tuesday

UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan will hold talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Tuesday, a Syrian official said. “Annan will arrive in Damascus on Monday and will meet Foreign Minister Walid Muallem,” the official said, asking not to be identified. “Then he will be received by President Assad on Tuesday.” It was to be Annan’s second visit to Syria since the start of his mission three months ago and came after the UN Security Council on Sunday strongly condemned the Syrian government for using artillery in a massacre in which at least 108 people were killed in the central town of Houla. The United Nations said that among the dead were 49 children and 34 women, many gruesomely blown to bits or shot dead at point blank range. Annan first visited Syria as special envoy on March 10. His six-point peace plan was supposed to begin with a ceasefire from April 12 but, despite the deployment of a UN military observer mission, it has failed to take hold.