AP, UNITED NATIONS, April 5, 2012 — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Thursday the crisis in Syria is getting worse and claiming more lives every day, even though President Bashar Assad’s government insists it is withdrawing troops ahead of a U.N. deadline to end the violence.
The U.N. chief appealed to Mr. Assad “to show vision and leadership” and keep his pledge to pull troops and heavy weapons out of cities and towns by April 10, and Mr. Ban urged the opposition to be ready to stop all violence if the Syrian government meets the deadline.
“Cities, towns and villages have been turned into war zones. The sources of violence are proliferating,” Mr. Ban told the U.N. General Assembly. “The human rights of the Syrian people continue to be violated. … Humanitarian needs are growing dramatically.”
His comments came as activists reported that Syrian troops attacked the Damascus suburb of Douma, an assault they said shows that Mr. Assad is intensifying violence in the days before the April 10 deadline. His crackdown on the yearlong uprising has left at least 9,000 people dead, according to the United Nations.
Earlier Thursday, a U.N. team arrived in Damascus to negotiate the possible deployment of U.N. monitors for any cease-fire between Syrian troops and rebel forces.
 Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (left), the U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria, poses with Maj. Gen. Robert Mood of Norway before a meeting at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva on Wednesday, April 4, 2012. Gen. Mood is heading a planning team for a possible deployment of a U.N. supervision and monitoring mission in Syria. (AP Photo/Keystone/Martial Trezzini)
Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy trying to end the conflict, said Syria has informed him of partial withdrawals from three locations — Idlib, Zabadani and Daraa — “but it is clear that more far-reaching action is urgently required.”
Mr. Annan and Mr. Ban spoke to the General Assembly minutes after the U.N. Security Council called on Syria to “urgently and visibly” fulfill its pledge to halt the use of troops and weapons by April 10. It raised the possibility of “further steps” if Syria doesn’t implement the six-point peace plan outlined by Mr. Annan, to which Mr. Assad agreed on March 25.
“All points of the plan are crucial, but one is most urgent: the need for a cessation of violence,” Mr. Annan told diplomats from the 193 U.N. member states. “Clearly, the violence is still continuing. Alarming levels of casualties and other abuses continue to be reported daily. Military operations in civilian population centers have not stopped.”
Mr. Ban said that despite the Syrian government’s acceptance of Mr. Annan’s plan, “the violence and assaults in civilian areas have not stopped.”
“The situation on the ground continues to deteriorate,” he said.
Mr. Ban has been speaking out against the violence in Syria for many months, but his remarks Thursday were especially strong and highly critical of the Assad government for unleashing attacks in the first place in response to “the legitimate demands of the Syrian people — the same demands that people across the Arab world have been making for more than a year now.”
Mr. Annan said all opposition parties his team has talked to “are committed to call for cessation of violence once the Syrian government has demonstrably fulfilled its commitments regarding use of heavy weapons and troop withdrawals.”
In planning for a possible cease-fire, a team led by Norwegian Maj. Gen. Robert Mood arrived Thursday in Damascus to begin discussing with the Syrian authorities “the eventual deployment of this U.N. supervision and monitoring mission,” Mr. Annan’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, said.
He said the United Nations is looking for a team of 200 to 250 soldiers to monitor a cease-fire. The deployment of U.N. monitors first would have to be authorized by the 15-nation Security Council.
While a halt to violence is a beginning, Mr. Annan stressed the importance of moving forward quickly on a Syrian-led political process including all parties to restore peace and “meet the aspirations of the Syrian people.”