In Syria, the ceasefire which went into effect on 12 April has turned out to be like the proverbial curate's egg – good in parts. However, since the peace plan proposed by UN/Arab League envoy Kofi Annan is the only game in town, the UN has carried on regardless even though the government has visibly failed to withdraw its forces from population centers and fighting has continued sporadically in Homs, Dir'a and other cities.  The situation was summed up later in the week by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who said in a letter to the Security Council on 18 April that "the Syrian government has yet to fully implement its initial obligations regarding the actions and deployments of its troops, or to return them to barracks. Violent incidents and reports of casualties have escalated again in recent days with reports of shelling of civilian areas and abuses by government forces. The government reports violent actions by armed groups. The cessation of armed violence is therefore clearly incomplete."

Meanwhile, on 14 April the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution authorizing an initial deployment of up to 30 unarmed UN observers who, according to Mr Ban, will "try to make concrete proposals by 18 April for an official observer mission," and an advance team of six monitors arrived in Damascus 15 April. According to Mr Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi on the same day, "we expect the Security Council to discuss and adopt a second resolution before the end of next week that will authorize the deployment of a full observer mission of 250, perhaps a few more. The mission will include civilians, political officers and human rights experts in order to observe the full implementation of the six-point plan, which includes a lot more than the cessation of hostilities." And on 19 April Syria and the UN announced the signature of an agreement on the terms of the monitoring mission, without being too specific about the details. According to a Syrian foreign ministry statement, "this preliminary agreement…aims to facilitate the task of the observers within the framework of Syrian sovereignty." Mr Fawzi put the emphasis somewhat differently, saying that "this agreement outlines the functions of the observers as they fulfil their mandate in Syria and the tasks and responsibilities of the Syrian government." For the sake of balance, he added that the Annan team was holding "similar discussions with representatives of the opposition on the tasks and responsibilities of the armed opposition groups."