Annan Speaks of Slight Improvement in Syria, but Acknowledges Plan Could Fail Kofi Annan, the main architect of the Syria peace plan, said Tuesday that his monitors had recorded a slight improvement there since the cease-fire's nominal start nearly four weeks ago. But he gave an otherwise bleak assessment, beseeching combatants on both sides to put down their weapons and acknowledging that his effort could fail. In a private briefing for the United Nations Security Council and at a later news conference, Mr. Annan, the former secretary general appointed as special representative for both the United Nations and Arab League, said the arrival later this month of the full contingent of 300 cease-fire monitors could further diminish the violence in Syria. "I believe their presence will make quite a difference," Mr. Annan told reporters in Geneva at the news conference, which was streamed on the United Nations Web site. Even the relatively few numbers of observers that have gone on patrol in Syria so far, he said, "have had a calming effect." But Mr. Annan also made it clear that the Syrian authorities had yet to fully implement any of the six points in his peace plan and that the "level of violence and abuses are unacceptable." The United Nations has reported that more than 9,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, and activist groups have reported hundreds of deaths since the cease-fire went into effect. Mr. Assad, who has characterized the uprising as foreign-backed terrorism, contends that his opponents are responsible for subverting the peace plan. Mr. Annan, whose plan is designed to create an atmosphere for the government and its opponents to talk to each other as a transition to political change in the country, said that could not happen until the killings and abuses stopped. "I'm not telling you any secret when I tell you that there is a profound concern that the country could otherwise descend into full civil war and the implications of that are quite frightening," he said. We cannot allow that to happen. He suggested that the biggest visible success of the plan so far was on the first full day of the cease-fire, April 12, when violence declined sharply. "If you can do it for one day, why don't you do it for a week, for a month?" he said, exhorting both government forces and its armed opponents to "give the people of Syria a break." His first priority, he said, was "to stop the killing, and we are pushing very hard for that." But Mr. Annan also acknowledged the possibility, in response to a question, that the plan may not work. "I am waiting for some suggestions as to what else we do," he said. We may well conclude down the line that it doesn't work and a different tack has to be taken. And that will be a very sad day, a tough day for the region. At the United Nations headquarters in New York, the Syrian ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, who had heard Mr. Annan's Security Council briefing, sounded far more optimistic than Mr. Annan and sought to portray any failings of the plan as the fault of antigovernment fighters and their foreign backers, including Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United States. "The evolving situation in Syria is going in the right direction," he told reporters. There is a positive trend on the ground. But Mr. Jaafari claimed he had visual evidence of the involvement of Arab jihadists, whom he said had been arrested by Syrian officials and had admitted they were motivated "by religious fatwas emanating form some sheik or imams in some Arab countries." "We are talking about facts, undeniable facts about the involvement of foreign fighters into the events in my country, Syria," he told reporters. This is a very serious matter, ladies and gentlemen, and those who are behind this big conspiracy against the mission of Kofi Annan should be held accountable. Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador, said after hearing Mr. Annan's briefing that "the situation in Syria remains dire." She reiterated that the United States supports the peace plan but that Mr. Assad should resign. Asked about Mr. Jaafari's assertions, Ms. Rice said, "I don't think anybody can say with complete certainty that there are not any foreign fighters in Syria." But, she added, "this is substantially a diversion from the main point. The main point is that the government continues to kill its own people. Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, who has become one of the Syrian government's most outspoken critics, sounded pessimistic about Mr. Annan's peace plan and suggested the number of cease-fire monitors should increase exponentially. "We need 1,000, 2,000, maybe 3,000 observers with a wide ranging mission so that they can simultaneously control all the cities," Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Rome, where he was visiting with his Italian counterpart, Mario Monti. "I have lost hope because we have been unable to achieve the result we wanted," Mr. Erdogan said. The U.N. Security Council should maybe take different steps. Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting from Rome.