International envoy Kofi Annan stated Monday that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad had accepted an April 10 deadline to start implementing a peace plan.

International envoy Kofi Annan stated Monday that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad had accepted an April 10 deadline to start implementing a peace plan.

According to AFP, Annan said that “Syria had agreed to immediately start pulling troops out of protest cities and complete a troop and heavy weapon withdrawal by April 10.”

“However, Annan considered that no progress had been yet made on reaching a ceasefire,” diplomats said.

Syria Confirms Committing to Annan’s Plan

Syrian envoy to the United Nations, Bashar Jaafari, criticized the Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish violation to Syria’s sovereignty.

“The countries which arm the terrorists in Syria, fund and supply them with communication sets seek to make the mission of Kofi Annan a failure,” Syrian News Agency SANA quoted Jaafari as saying.

As he confirmed that the April 10 date had been agreed "by common accord" between Annan and his government, Jaafari called on all parts to help in implementing the plan.

US Doubts

For her part, US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice said after Annan’s briefing at the UN Security Council that the United States and other countries doubted that Al- Assad would carry out the new commitments.

"Past experience would lead us to be skeptical and to worry that over the next several days, that rather than a diminution of the violence we might yet again see an escalation of the violence. We certainly hope that is not so," Rice said.

In parallel, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland stated that Washington would prefer a quicker implementation of the plan.

"We all want to see this happen immediately," she told reporters, reiterating skepticism to "judge him (Al-Assad) by his actions" on whether the plan holds.

NATO Warns against Arming "Opposition"

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen warned Monday against arming the so-called Syrian opposition, and considered that instead, "a peaceful and political solution” should be sought.

"I don't think the right way forward would be to provide any group with weapons," the NATO chief said, adding that “there is a clear risk that the provision of arms to any group in Syria would also lead to a potentially dangerous proliferation of weapons in the region.”

Moreover, Rasmussen stressed that  the NATO had “no intention whatsoever” to intervene in Syria.