DOHA - Qatar on Saturday urged UN envoy Kofi Annan to set a timeframe for his Syria peace mission, and asked the UN Security Council to apply Chapter VII which permits military intervention.
"We request Mr. Annan to set a timeframe for his mission because it is unacceptable that massacres and bloodshed continue while the mission is ongoing indefinitely," Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani told a ministerial committee on Syria attended by Annan.
"We demand the UN Security Council to refer the six-point (Annan plan) to Chapter VII so that the international community could assume responsibilities, he said.
The Qatari premier, whose country has been taking a leading role in mobilising the international community to act against Damascus over its 15-month deadly crackdown on dissent, said the Syrian regime "makes a mistake in betting on surviving this way."
He accused the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime of ignoring Annan's six-point peace plan, saying Damascus "did not implement the first point of the plan and ignored the rest."
Annan's plan calls for a halt to violence, daily two-hour humanitarian truce, media access to areas of fighting, the launching of a political dialogue, the right to demonstrate and the release of detainees.
In April, the UN Security Council unanimously passed its first ever resolution on the Syria crisis, allowing for a team of unarmed ceasefire monitors.
Some 300 monitors have been allowed into Syria, but the UN-backed ceasefire which technically went into effect on April 12 has been violated daily as deadly violence continues to plague the country.
