The ambassador of the United States to Syria, Robert Ford, said on Tuesday he had received reports that the opposition groups had engaged in human rights violations.

The ambassador of the United States to Syria, Robert Ford, said on Tuesday he had received reports that the opposition groups had engaged in human rights violations.

Ford was also skeptical that Syria has accepted the peace plan proposed by the UN-Arab envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, saying it would be “best to look for action, not words” from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

"I have to tell you that my own experience with him (Assad) is you want to see steps on the ground and not just take his word at face value," Ford said at a Capitol Hill hearing.

Ford was asked about recent statements by the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch that armed opposition groups in Syria had committed serious human rights abuses. It said these abuses included kidnapping, detention and torture of security force members and government supporters.

"We had reports like that last year, when some of the fighting in Homs became really serious," Ford said.

"We raised it even in Syria when my embassy was still open. We discussed it with some of the local revolution council representatives - who are themselves not members of armed groups, but certainly are in contact with them - and emphasized that they would be held to a standard on this if they wanted support from western countries," he said.

Ford said the United States had also raised the matter with the Syrian National Council, a Syrian opposition coalition, and he noted that last week the council issued a statement saying such abuses were “against” what they “stood for”.
The United States announced on February 6 it was closing its embassy in Syria because of the worsening security situation there but Ford remains ambassador, working from Washington.