United Nations and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan met today with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the midst of worsening violence. Syria's 16-month conflict has so far claimed more than 15,000 lives. Annan said today's last-ditch attempt to salvage a peace effort ended with an agreement on how end the violence, but he did not disclose details. Earlier, he acknowledged his six-point peace plan had failed to halt the fighting between anti-government forces and the Assad regime. "The bottom line is that the majority of the country is engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, for democracy, for dignity," says Rafif Jouejati, the English-language spokesperson for the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists throughout the country. "We have mountains of evidence indicating that his armed forces have been engaged in systematic torture, rampant detentions, massacres across the country."
Full transcript here.