Arabs meet to push Syria peace plan, violence unabated

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Fighting between Syrian security forces and rebels killed at least 13 people on Thursday as Arab leaders gathered at a summit in Baghdad to press Damascus for rapid implementation of a peace plan that President Bashar al-Assad has said he can accept.

Arab leaders, who appear to have backed away from their call on Assad to step aside and hand over to a deputy, remain split over how to deal with the continuing violence.

Pre-empting the summit, Syria said on Wednesday it would reject any initiatives from the Arab League, which suspended Syria in November, and said it would deal only with individual Arab states.

In Istanbul, Syrian opposition representatives met to try to settle deep internal disputes before the arrival of Western foreign ministers for a 'Friends of Syria' conference on Sunday to map out where the year-old uprising is heading.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the violence, reported that eight members of the security forces were wounded in a clash with armed defectors in Dael, in the southern province of Deraa.

In the town of Kherbet Ghazaleh, surrounded by the army and security forces, loud explosions were heard. In northern Hama province, an army convoy was ambushed and two soldiers killed. In Idlib province three people died when the army launched a raid in a rural area east of the town of Maarat al-Nuaman.

The Observatory reported clashes between army and defectors near the town of Zabadani, near the Lebanese border. In rural Damascus province explosions were heard and smoke was seen rising from building in the town of Harasta.

Syria's state news agency SANA said that two colonels were assassinated in the northern city of Aleppo on Thursday.

"Four terrorists shot Abdul Karim al-Rai and Fuad Shaaban ... while they were on their way to work," SANA said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, also attending the meeting in Baghdad, has said Assad's acceptance of the Annan deal, which has met with strong skepticism in the West, "is an important initial step that could bring an end to the violence."

He urged Assad to 'put those commitments into immediate effect'.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said on Wednesday that Assad 'has not taken the necessary steps to implement' the peace plan of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, now special Syria envoy for the U.N. and Arab League.

Syria's major-power backers Russia and China have inched up the pressure on Assad by endorsing the Annan plan, with the unspoken implication that if he fails to act on it, they may be prepared to back action by the U.N. Security Council.

But Russia is also pressing the opposition Syrian National Council to formally accept the Annan proposals, which do not meet their demand that Assad step down immediately.