Buying time is in Assad's interest

With Assad seen as a reluctant participant in Annan's plan, the observers' success will depend on how much access they gucci handbags can negotiate in Syria and how quickly the team can grow to a full contingent, analysts said. The Security Council demanded freedom of movement for the U.N. team, but the regime could try to create obstacles; the failure of an Arab League observer mission earlier this year was blamed in part on regime restrictions imposed on the visitors. "This will be a serious gucci shirts cat-and-mouse game between the government and the U.N. for weeks to come," George Lopez, a professor of peace studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana said of the new observer mission. Buying time is in Assad's interest, he said. However, a reassuring presence of monitors could also enable Syria's opposition to return to staging mass marches, common in the early days of the anti-Assad uprising that erupted in March 2011. In response to a gucci bags violent regime crackdown on such protests, the turnout for weekly anti-regime marches has decreased. The opposition resorted more and more to armed attacks in recent months. By returning to peaceful protests, it would be able to regain some of the moral high ground it lost as the conflict became increasingly violent. Since the cease-fire began, each side has accused the other of violations. Syria's state-run news agency SANA has reported rebel attacks targeting checkpoints and army officers, while opposition louis vuitton handbags activists said regime troops and their allied Shabiha militiamen continued arrest raids and mistreatment of those in detention. The city of Homs, Syria's third-largest, was the main flashpoint of violence again Sunday. The city had been battered by daily regime shelling for three weeks before the cease-fire, and shelling resumed late Friday, less than 48 hours after the truce took effect, residents said. "What cease-fire? There's an womens lv belts for sale online 2012 newest explosion every five to six minutes," a Homs-based activist, identified only as Yazan, said via Skype.