UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan will travel this weekend to Moscow and Beijing to discuss the crisis in Syria, his spokesman said Friday, adding that a team sent to Damascus has returned. The team held “three days of intensive talks with Syrian authorities on urgent steps to implement” Annan’s proposals on halting the violence, the spokesman said. “Mr Annan and his team are currently studying the Syrian responses carefully, and negotiations with Damascus continue,” he added. Annan’s plan calls for a UN-supervised halt to fighting with the government pulling troops and heavy weapons out of protest cities, a daily two-hour humanitarian pause to hostilities and access to all areas affected by the fighting. The special envoy also sought the release of people detained over the past year of the uprising against Assad in which the United Nations says far more than 8,000 people have been killed. In Moscow, Annan will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev. Annan’s programme in Beijing has not been confirmed.
