Syria: France calls for UN to enforce Annan plan

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says he will call on the UN Security Council to make mediator Kofi Annan's Syria peace plan mandatory.

France would propose that Mr Annan's six-point plan be enforced under the UN's Chapter Seven provision, he said.

Mr Fabius told a news conference in Paris that the conflict in Syria had become a "civil war".

His remarks echoed the words of the head of UN peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, on Tuesday.

A Chapter Seven resolution in the Security Council would allow for action to be backed up by force, which fellow council members Russia and China would be unlikely to accept. But Mr Fabius said he hoped that Russia would agree to the proposal.

The pragmatic view is that if it looks and sounds like a civil war, then it is one”

It was necessary "to resort to Chapter Seven to make the provisions of the Annan plan mandatory", he said.

"We are working towards this and hope that this move will be swiftly implemented."

Back in April, Mr Fabius's predecessor as France's foreign minister, Alain Juppe, warned that if the Annan plan failed then the UN would "have to move to a new stage" involving enforcement.

Under the Annan plan, all armed violence has to end and all parties must ensure provision of humanitarian assistance to all areas affected by the fighting.

The authorities are also required to ensure freedom of movement for journalists and the right for people to demonstrate peacefully.

1. Syrian-led political process to address the aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people

2. UN-supervised cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties to protect civilians

3. All parties to ensure provision of humanitarian assistance to all areas affected by the fighting, and implement a daily two-hour humanitarian pause

4. Authorities to intensify the pace and scale of release of arbitrarily detained persons

5. Authorities to ensure freedom of movement throughout the country for journalists

6. Authorities to respect freedom of association and the right to demonstrate peacefully

Earlier on Wednesday, Syrian forces seized control of the western mountain town of Haffa after fierce fighting with rebels. State media said Haffa had been "purged of terrorists" and government forces had "restored security and calm to the area".

The rebel Free Syrian Army said it had pulled its fighters out of the area to spare residents from further massive bombardments.

A network of anti-government groups, the Local Co-ordination Committees, reported violence elsewhere in Syria on Wednesday. It said five people had been killed in shelling by government forces in the town of Bosra el-sham near Deraa in the south.

Meanwhile, Russia has hit back at US claims that Moscow is supplying Damascus with attack helicopters. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the sale would "escalate the conflict quite dramatically".

On a visit to Tehran, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that Russia was "not supplying Syria or any other country with items which can be used against peaceful protesters, unlike the United States, which regularly supplies weapons to the region".