Despite news of the Syrian government’s acceptance of a peace plan brought in by special envoy Kofi Annan a day before, by Wednesday it was clear that those headlines didn’t mean much in the way of actual progress in Syria, as stories about ongoing violence and accusations that the Assad regime was deliberately torturing children were among the day’s reports.

BBC:

On Tuesday, the UN said the Syrian government had agreed to accept the plan – a claim met by scepticism from anti-government activists.

But on Wednesday, a Syrian government spokesman told the BBC: “Since our membership was suspended, we deal with other Arab countries on a bilateral level only.

“Therefore, we will not be dealing with or addressing any initiative that comes out of the Arab League at any level,” Jihram Maqdessy said.

[…] UN human rights commissioner Navi Pillay accused the Syrian government of systematically detaining and torturing children.

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