Head of observer mission says escalating violence is impeding mission’s ability to carry out its mandate.

Al Jazeera, 16 Jun 2012 – The UN observer mission to Syria has suspended its activities, saying escalating violence is impeding the monitors’ ability to carry out its mandate.
“UN observers will not be conducting patrols and will stay in their locations until further notice,” the mission’s chief General Major Robert Mood said in a statement on Saturday.
About 300 observers were deployed in Syria, tasked with monitoring a ceasefire and supporting the full implementation of a six-point peace plan drafted by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, which was supposed to lead to talks between the two sides.
However, hundreds of people have been killed since the first observers were deployed in April and the mission has been harshly criticised by the opposition.
“The lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides: innocent civilians, men women and children are being killed every day,” Mood’s statement said.
“It is also posing significant risks to our observers.”
He said intensifying violence in the last 10 days was “limiting our ability to observe, verify, report as well as assist in local dialogue and stability projects”.
Mood said the suspension would be reviewed on a daily basis and operations would resume when the situation was fit.
’Days were numbered’
Al Jazeera’s Anita McNaught, reporting from the Turkish capital Istanbul, where Syrian opposition groups were meeting on Saturday, said the reaction to the move by the UN mission was “a lack of surprise on the whole”.
“One delegate said to me [the monitors] were there to observe and, from where they sat, the regime had done everything to obstruct the mission to go in and actually view things,” McNaught said.
 
“So in a sense they weren’t being able to do the full job they were sent in to do so what was the point of them being there anymore?”
Another delegate told our correspondent he felt the mission’s “days were numbered” after an attack last week on a UN convoy trying to reach the town of Haffeh.
Shots were fired at the car carrying the UN observers after they were turned away from Haffeh by angry supporters of President Bashar al-Assad, who threw stones and metal rods at their convoy, a spokeswoman for the monitors said at the time.
Saturday’s suspension signals the unraveling of Annan’s plan as the conflict that began in March 2011 with peaceful protests challenging the regime spirals closer toward civil war. Activists say some 14,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
Western powers have pinned their hopes on the plan, in part because there are no other options on the table. The international community has little appetite for the military intervention that helped oust Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, and several rounds of sanctions have failed to stop the bloodshed.
But our correspondent said that some Syrian opposition members felt the suspension of activities may increase pressure on Syria, and on Russia and China “who have been so staunchly behind the Annan plan and the implementation of it in any shape or form”.
“This might increase the pressure on them to do something else constuctive to bring some kind of a resolution or de-escalation of the situation in Syria,” she said.