BEIRUT Fighting raged across Syria on Monday with clashes reported just a few miles from where President Bashar al-Assad had unveiled a "peace plan" that Syrians on both sides said would do nothing to end the country's 21-month-old uprising. 
 
 Hours after Assad addressed cheering loyalists at the Damascus Opera House on Sunday in his first public speech in months, fighting erupted near the road to the city's international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. 
 
 The opposition-linked group said artillery hit the district of Aqraba, 3 miles from the Opera House. Fighting continued all night and into Monday around the capital, as well as in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, it said. 
 
 In central Syria, the towns of Taybet Imam and Halfaya were bombarded with aerial strikes and artillery, said Abu Faisal, an activist speaking over the internet from Taybet Imam. 
 
 "Every four to five minutes, we hear the burst from a rocket. We cannot get any wounded out because we are essentially under siege by the shelling," he said, adding that many civilians had fled. Taybet Imam sits on an entrance to Syria's main north-south highway, close to the central city of Hama. 
 
 The government restricts access by international media and the accounts could not be verified. 
 
 Damascus residents said Assad's speech, which offered no concessions to his foes, was met with celebratory gunfire in pro-Assad neighborhoods. 
 
 But even there, some saw no sign peace was closer: a loyalist resident of southern Damascus reached by internet said the speech was eloquent but empty. 
 
 "It sounded more like gloating than making promises," said the woman, who gave only her first name, Aliaa. "I agree with the ideas but words are really just words until he takes some action. He needs to do something. But even so, everything he suggests now, it is too late, the rebels aren't going to stop." 
 
 "NO ONE CARES" 
 
 In the once-affluent district of Mezzeh, scene of several bomb attacks, an Assad critic said people had more pressing concerns than a TV speech. "Here, no one cares about this speech. They care about food and electricity." 
 
 Another said few people had watched the speech and that Assad's crackdown would not stop: "Military operations will continue in full swing, and he is staying." 
 
 France, the United States, Britain and Turkey all said Assad's speech, his first to an audience since June last year, showed he had lost touch with reality after unrest that the United Nations says has killed 60,000 people. 
 
 U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland had harsh words for Assad when she was asked whether the United States regarded him as a rational actor and whether he was "evil." 
 
 "I don't think anybody who is guilty of the kinds of crimes against your own people that he's guilty of could be considered rational," Nuland told reporters in Washington. "I personally consider what he's done evil." 
 
 Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Assad on Monday of "directing state terrorism". 
 
 "Bashar al-Assad's speech is further evidence of just how far he has cut himself off from reality in order to justify his repression of the Syrian people," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said. 
 
 The plan described by the Syrian leader as a new peace initiative proposed an army ceasefire only after rebels halt their operations and summoned Syrians to mobilize for a war to defend the state against "a puppet made by the West". 
 
 The United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was disappointed that Assad's speech rejected the idea of a transitional government to pave the way to new elections - a central plank of a peace plan promoted by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. 
 
 "NATIONAL PROGRAMME" 
 
 Syria's Prime Minister Wael al-Halki called on Monday for a special cabinet meeting to implement the "national program announced by President Bashar al-Assad yesterday to solve the crisis in Syria", the state news agency SANA said. 
 
 George Sabra, vice president of the opposition National Coalition, said the putative peace plan "did not even deserve to be called an initiative". 
 
 "We should see it rather as a declaration that he will continue his war against the Syrian people," he told Reuters. 
 
 Assad's ally Iran defended the speech as offering a "comprehensive political process". "This plan rejects violence and terrorism and any foreign interference," Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said. 
 
 There was no immediate response from Moscow, which has acted as Assad's main protector on the diplomatic stage. Russian state offices were quiet for the Orthodox Christmas holiday. 
 
 Syrian state television played up the speech, showing footage of convoys of cars driving through main streets in Damascus. People waving the Syrian flag leaned out of car windows and some braved the cold and rain to walk alongside. 
 
 "It was a victorious speech that respects the martyred Syrian soldiers," said one man on state TV, adding that his brother had been killed fighting the opposition. 
 
 After six months of advances, rebels now control wide areas of northern and eastern Syria, most of its border crossings with Turkey and a crescent of Damascus suburbs. 
 
 Assad's government is still firmly entrenched in the capital and controls most of the densely populated southwest, the Mediterranean coast, the main north-south highway and military bases countrywide. Its helicopters and jets are able to strike rebel-held areas with impunity. 
 
 U.S. military cargo planes carrying equipment and personnel arrived at the Incirlik air base in Turkey on Monday, part of a deployment of NATO Patriot anti-missiles to bolster security along Turkey's 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria. Dutch Patriot missile batteries bound for Turkey left an army base in the Netherlands. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Ayat Basma in Beirut, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Vicky Buffery in Paris and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Philippa Fletcher and Giles Elgood) ||||| MOSCOW/AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - The international mediator touting a peace plan for Syria warned on Saturday of "hell" if the warring sides shun talks, and Moscow accused enemies of President Bashar al-Assad of blocking negotiations. 
 
 U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said in Moscow that responsible people inside and outside Syria should "help the Syrians stop their descent into more and more bloodshed, into more and more chaos and perhaps a failed state". 
 
 Efforts to find a negotiated solution to a 21-month-old war that has killed some 45,000 people have floundered, with the opposition, buoyed by rebel military advances, demanding that Assad be excluded from power before any talks can proceed. 
 
 In a sign that the war may not quickly be won, government forces - in retreat for much of the past few months - scored a victory in the strategically important central city of Homs, where they pushed rebels from a district after days of fighting. 
 
 But in the north, Syria's national airline had to cancel a flight from Cairo to Aleppo, according to Egyptian airline officials, due to insecurity at an airport that rebels have declared as a target and where explosions were heard overnight. 
 
 Brahimi spent five days in Damascus this week as part of a push to promote a months-old peace plan that calls for a transitional government, without specifying Assad's role. 
 
 "If the only alternative is really hell or a political process, then all of us must work ceaselessly for a political process," Brahimi said in Moscow. "It is difficult, it is very complicated, but there is no other choice." 
 
 Western and some Arab states that back the revolt are hoping that Russia, Assad's main international protector and arms supplier, will drop its support. 
 
 "WRONG, COUNTERPRODUCTIVE" 
 
 They have been searching for signs that Moscow, an ally of Syria since Assad's father seized power 42 years ago, is changing its stance - so far mostly in vain. 
 
 After meeting Brahimi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov firmly repeated Moscow's position that Assad's removal cannot be a precondition for negotiations, calling the Syrian opposition's refusal to talk to Damascus a "dead end". 
 
 "When the opposition says only Assad's exit will allow it to begin a dialogue about the future of its own country, we think this is wrong, we think this is rather counterproductive," he said. "The costs of this precondition are more and more lives of Syrian citizens." 
 
 Having seized much of northern and eastern Syria over the last six months, Assad's opponents seem even less likely to accept talks with the government now than when the Geneva agreement first flopped in June. 
 
 Rebels say they expect to win the war on the ground. But if both sides intend to fight to the bitter end, the longest and deadliest war to have emerged from last year's Arab revolts may have a long time left to run its course. 
 
 Despite its setbacks, the government still has the bigger arsenal and a potent air force. It controls most of the densely populated southwest of Syria, the Mediterranean coast, most of the main north-south highway and military bases countrywide. 
 
 In Azaz, a rebel-held town in the north, Abu Badri, 38, surveyed the damage of his home two hours after it was destroyed in an airstrike. He said four children and an elderly man were among the dead. Relatives trying to salvage what they could carried out drinking glasses, a fridge and an oven. 
 
 "We'll have to find a tent to stay in near the border with Turkey. What else can we do?" he said. At least six houses were destroyed by two bombs on the town, which was just beginning to recover from earlier bombardment by Assad's forces. 
 
 Eleven people were killed according to local activist Abu Zaid, who saw new graves dug in the cemetery nearby. 
 
 Blood was spattered on the bricks that littered the area. A child's teddy bear lay in the wreckage. A bulldozer cleared the heavy rubble while young boys dug through the debris with their hands, hoping to find people still alive. 
 
 In the central city of Homs, government forces pushed insurgents from the Deir Ba'alba district after several days of fierce fighting, opposition activists said. 
 
 Homs controls the strategically vital highway linking Damascus to the Alawite heartland on the coast. There were unconfirmed reports dozens of rebel fighters had been killed, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the British-based, pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group. 
 
 WEST SEEKS RUSSIAN CHANGE OF HEART 
 
 The United States and its allies hope a change of heart in Moscow could prod Assad to yield power, much as Russia's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago. 
 
 Lavrov noted that Assad has repeatedly said he would not go, adding that Russia "does not have the ability to change this". 
 
 Brahimi's peace plan has stalled on the demand by the opposition that Assad be excluded from any transitional government, a precondition also backed by the United States, European countries and most Arab states. 
 
 Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi, repeating the most populous Arab country's public support for the rebellion, said there was "no place for the current regime in the future of Syria". 
 
 "The revolution of the Syrian people, which we support, will go forward, God willing, to realize its goals of freedom." 
 
 Most Arab states are ruled by Sunni Muslims, who form the majority in Syria and are the foundation of the revolt against Assad, a member of the Shi'ite-linked Alawite minority sect. 
 
 Brahimi's plan was formally agreed in Geneva in June by world powers, but Washington and Moscow argued from the outset over the core question of whether the plan meant Assad must go. 
 
 In Damascus, Brahimi advocated a transitional government "with all the powers of the state", but his wording did not exclude a role for Assad. 
 
 The envoy's credibility with the rebels appears to have withered. In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up banners ridiculing Brahimi with English obscenities. 
 
 "We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," the rebel chief in Aleppo province, Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, said on Friday. 
 
 Moscow has invited the main opposition leader, Moaz Alkhatib, to visit for talks, but Alkhatib rejected the invitation outright on Friday, instead demanding Lavrov apologize for Russia's support of Assad. He did, however, say he could meet Russian officials in a third country. 
 
 Brahimi said a political solution had to be based on the Geneva agreement negotiated by his predecessor, Kofi Annan, shortly before Annan quit in frustration at the divisions among veto-wielding powers on the U.N. Security Council. 
 
 "There may be one or two little adjustments to make here and there, but it is a reasonable basis for a political process that will help the Syrian people," Brahimi said of the Geneva plan. 
 
 Brahimi is to meet senior U.S. and Russian diplomats together in the coming weeks. Two such meetings this month produced no signs of a breakthrough. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Peter Graff and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Tom Perry in Cairo; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Louise Ireland)
– Syria's civil war raged on today, without the slightest pause of acknowledgement for yesterday's rare Bashar al-Assad speech. It was billed as the unveiling of a "peace plan," but Assad offered essentially no concessions and spent much of the speech justifying his bloody crackdown. And there may be repercussions: In it, he dismissed the work of UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, saying, "Everyone who comes to Syria knows that Syria accepts advice, but not orders," and the New York Times predicts such remarks might cause Brahimi to wash his hands of the conflict. That would present the US and other "Friends of Syria" with a quandary: Get more involved, or potentially watch the conflict continue indefinitely. And though celebratory gunfire rang out afterward, even some loyalists were unimpressed. "It sounded more like gloating than making promises," one Assad supporter tells Reuters. "Everything he suggests now, it is too late. The rebels aren't going to stop." Indeed, hours after the speech, fresh clashes broke out along the road to Damascus' international airport, and regime artillery reportedly hit a district just three miles from where Assad spoke. One Assad critic in a hard-hit district agreed that the speech meant little. "Here, no one cares about this speech. They care about food and electricity."