Hussein Ibish
Al-Jazeera English
Inside Syria
April 13, 2012 - 11:00pm

As the UN security council debates a resolution to send 30 monitors into Syria to monitor the ceasefire between Syrian government forces and the opposition fighters, the shelling and gunfire continues.

On the second day of the UN-backed ceasefire to end the 13-month uprising, protests continued. Both sides are believed to have breached the terms, with several deaths being reported.

The violence now makes the UN's next move more important than ever. But as Ahmad Fawzi, Kofi Annan's spokesperson, points out, there is still a long way to go:

"We are under no illusion here that we have come to the end of this conflict. This is only the beginning of a long road towards reconciling and towards building the future that Syrians aspire to - where there are no detentions without cause, where law enforcement guarantees peace and security in the streets, not the military."

Inside Syria, with presenter Dareen Abu Ghaida, discusses the chances of Kofi Annan's plan in securing peace in Syria.

Has Annan's peace plan failed? How important is the UN observer mission?

Joining Inside Syria to analyse the Syria crisis are guests: Hussein Ibish, a contributor to magazines such as Foreign Policy and The Atlantic, who also writes a weekly column for Now Lebanon; Haitham Alsibahie, a member of the Syrian Social Club, a group in London advocating for reform in Syria and not regime change; and Hussein al-Harbi, a Syrian opposition activist and University lecturer, who also hosts a TV talk show on Syria called al-Shaab.

"The ceasefire is a farce and the whole Annan mission was dead on arrival from the beginning. Not one of its points have been implemented and not even the ceasefire is working. The next phase - if the UN is able to send 30 unarmed observers to Syria - is not going to change anything. The regime has made it very clear that its point of view is that it is being attacked by terrorists who are Islamist and Salafist jihadist and it is going to pursue a military solution, a military victory and engage in its own reforms on its own timetable. They are not interested in dialogue, they are not interested in any of the six points of the Annan mission. They will treat all of this as a very useful diplomatic game that they will spin out as long as possible for their own purposes. But nothing is going to happen to change things in Syria until the balance of power on the ground changes." Hussein Ibish, a contributor to Foreign Policy and The Atlantic

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