(From right) UN-Arab League envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, former US president Jimmy Carter, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Al-Araby and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland attend a press conference after their meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday. — AP BEIRUT – The UN-Arab League envoy to Syria said the government in Damascus and some rebel leaders have agreed to a temporary ceasefire during a four-day Eid Al-Adha holiday that starts Friday. The Syrian government, however, did not confirm Wednesday's announcement by Lakhdar Brahimi, saying only that it was still studying the envoy's proposal. The rebel Free Syrian Army said that they will cease fire if government forces stop shooting first. “The FSA will stop firing if the regime stops,” said FSA military council chief General Mustafa Al-Sheikh. But Brahimi told reporters in Cairo that President Bashar Al-Assad's government has agreed to a truce for the Eid Al-Adha holiday. His announcement was met with intensified airstrikes on a rebel-held area near the besieged city of Aleppo. Brahimi did not elaborate on how the truce would be monitored. The envoy met Assad in Damascus Sunday as part of his push for a ceasefire between rebels and government forces. He also held talks last week with opposition groups inside and outside Syria and earlier received “promises” but not a “commitment” from them to honor the ceasefire. In Damascus, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi stressed Wednesday that the cessation of military operations during Eid Al-Adha is still “being studied” by the General Command of the Army and the Syrian armed forces, and that “the final position on this matter will be issued on Thursday.” Abdelbaset Sieda, the head of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, said that he had little hope the truce would take hold. He said opposition fighters have told him they are willing to adhere to it, but will respond if attacked by regime forces. “This regime, we don't trust it, because it is saying something and doing something else on the ground,” Sieda said in a phone interview from Stockholm, Sweden. Brahimi's proposal is far more modest than a six-point plan by his predecessor as Syrian envoy, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. A ceasefire was the centerpiece of Annan's proposal and was to lead to talks on a peaceful transition. However, a truce never took hold and both sides violated their commitments, though Annan said at the time the regime was the main aggressor because it refused to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from population centers. In Syria, regime warplanes struck the village of Mar Shureen near a strategic rebel-held town in the country's north Wednesday, killing five members of an extended family, activists said. The village is located just outside the town of Maaret Al-Numan, about 1.5 kilometer from a Syrian military camp that troops and rebels have been fighting over for several days. Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The AP that government aircraft hit the village in the morning hours. The dead include a father and his two sons, aged 10 and 24, as well as a two other relatives, a woman and a young man, Abdul-Rahman said. His group relies on reports from a network of activists on the ground. – Agencies
