Syrian Brotherhood urges U.N. to deem Annan’s plan a failure

The United States is disappointed that Damascus has failed to live up to promises made to adhere to a U.N.-backed peace plan and will increase pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday.

“We intend to continue to ramp up the international pressure against the Assad regime and encourage them in the strongest possible terms to live up to the obligations and commitments that they made in the context of the Kofi Annan plan,” Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to Reuters.

Similarly, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday said that Syria is not respecting a peace plan outlined by Annan.

“It seems that the Syrian regime does not comply with the Annan plan. I urge them to comply,” Rasmussen told reporters after meeting Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti in Rome.

He added however: “We have no intention to intervene in Syria. We believe the right way forward is to ensure a political, peaceful solution.”

NATO member Turkey has a long and increasingly tense border with Syria.

Tens of thousands of people protested across Syria on Friday as a deadly suicide bombing rocked the capital, killing 11 people and fuelling growing skepticism over the prospects of the U.N.-backed peace plan.

Syria’s exiled Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, urged U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to acknowledge that Damascus had failed to honor a peace plan and to suspend its membership of the world body.

“We ask Ban Ki-moon to announce that Assad’s government has failed to honor the peace plan and to declare the plan finished ... at a time when dozens of innocent people are dying,” the group said in a statement issued in Britain, AFP reported.

It also called for “the freezing of Syria’s membership in the international organization, until a transitional government that represents the Syrian people’s will is established.”

The Brotherhood, which is banned in Syria, said the United Nations should sever all ties with Assad’s government, which it said was made up of “hooligans that have taken over the state and Syrian society.”

It denounced the international community’s “silence” in the face of crimes committed by the Damascus regime and accused it of “complicity in the genocide of the Syrian people.”

Ban on Thursday demanded that Damascus honor its commitments “without delay,” after U.N. ceasefire observers on the ground in Syria reported that Annan’s six-point peace plan was being violated.

Meanwhile, more than 65,000 Syrians have fled the bloody crackdown by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime on an uprising against his rule, with most going to Turkey and Lebanon, the United Nations says.

A weekly update posted on the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR)’s Syria Regional Refugee Response web page says there are 65,070 Syrian refugees in neighboring countries -- 49,193 of whom have registered with the U.N. and 15,877 others who are waiting to do so, according to AFP.

There are 23,942 Syrian refugees in Turkey, 22,000 in Lebanon, 15,999 in Jordan and 3,129 in Iraq, according to the UNHCR.

The United Nations says more than 9,000 people have died since a revolt erupted against the Assad regime in March last year, while non-government groups put the figure at more than 11,100.