BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS —Syria and the United Nations signed an agreement on Thursday on the terms of a ceasefire monitoring mission, a witness at the Foreign Ministry in Damascus said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (C) and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe (2ndL) attend a meeting “Friends of Syria” in Paris April 19, 2012. Major international powers meeting in Paris on Thursday called a U.N.-backed peace plan the “last hope” to resolve the Syrian crisis and said they would do all they could to help it succeed, according to draft conclusions obtained by Reuters. The agenda of the meeting “Friends of Syria”, which includes France, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is to ensure the Arab League-U.N. plan succeeds. REUTERS

A statement from the UN-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan said the Syrian government and the United Nations had agreed a basis for a “protocol” on the deployment of more observers.

Earlier in the day Russia said it would not take part in a meeting of foreign ministers on Syria in Paris as they were only aimed at isolating the regime and would hurt the chances of direct peace talks.

“It seems that this meeting is not aimed at finding the grounds for dialogue within Syria, but quite the opposite,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement.

Thursday’s meeting in Paris is aimed “at deepening the contradictions between the opposition and Damascus by promoting the international isolation of the latter,” the statement added.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe was to host U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and their 12 counterparts later on Thursday for talks France said would send a “strong” call to the regime to abide by international peace envoy Kofi Annan’s plan.

Russia said the meeting differed little from two previous “Friends of Syria” conferences that Moscow also skipped because they included calls for President Bashar Assad’s ouster.

The foreign ministry said the Paris meeting was as “one-sided” as the Friends of Syria talks because it failed to include representatives from the Syrian regime.

The statement added that those interested in open dialogue “should not engage in destructive political amateurism” and show open support for Annan’s six-point peace plan.

Humanitarian corridors queried

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Thursday that the solution for the crisis in Syria was the establishment of humanitarian corridors which would allow the opposition to Assad to survive.

But the International Committee for the Red Cross played down calls for a humanitarian corridors, instead reinforcing its original request for a daily two-hour ceasefire.

“Our position is clear: when we talk about a halt of fighting, we’re talking about a temporary ceasefire for two hours per day for certain times, for a given place with the purpose mainly of evacuating the wounded or providing life-saving assistance,” Rabab al-Rifai, the ICRC representative in Damascus, told Al-Akhbar.

Al-Rifai said that humanitarian corridors would require the deployment of armed forces to man it, a move the ICRC views with caution.

“Humanitarian corridors would probably be manned by armed or military forces. We could start talking about the militarization of humanitarian assistance, and we’d prefer to avoid that,” she said.

Sarkozy talks tough

Ahead of Thursday’s meeting Sarkozy – a strong supporter of Syria’s external opposition – used tough rhetoric against Assad, accusing the Syrian leader of “lying” and not adhering to the UN peace plan.

“Bashar Assad is lying…He wants to wipe Homs off the map just like (former Libyan President Muammar) Gaddafi wanted to destroy Benghazi,” Sarkozy said.

“The solution is the establishment of humanitarian corridors so that an opposition can exist in Syria,” he told Europe 1 radio.

While the truce worked out with international envoy Annan has held in some parts of Syria, in strong opposition areas such as Homs, Hama, Idlib and Deraa clashes are still ongoing.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a letter to the Security Council obtained by Reuters on Wednesday that Syria has not fully withdrawn troops and heavy weapons from towns, failing to send a “clear signal” about its commitment to peace.

Sarkozy, who trails his Socialist rival in polls ahead of the first round of France’s presidential election on Sunday, said he was convinced that Assad’s regime was condemned to fall.

“We called this (foreign ministers’) meeting to gather all those who cannot stand that a dictator is killing his people,” he said. “I am convinced that Assad’s regime is condemned.”

“The Chinese, like the Russians, do not like to be isolated and if we unite the major powers to say ‘this is the direction we must go in with our Arab allies’ then the isolation of China and Russia on this dossier will not last,” Sarkozy said.

“We refuse to remain powerless on this subject,” he said.

China considers observers

China said on Thursday it was considering sending observers to monitor the week-old truce in Syria.

China is “seriously studying” the idea, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin told a daily news briefing.

Ban said an expanded UN monitoring mission for Syria would be composed of “an initial deployment” of up to 300 unarmed observers.

But Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said 250 observers was a “reasonable number,” adding they should be from countries such as China, Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa, which Damascus considers are more sympathetic than nations in the West or the Arab League.

— TAAN, Reuters, Al-Akhbar