BEIRUT: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Syrian President Bashar Assad of tougher measures if he squanders his “last chance” by failing to implement the Kofi Annan peace plan.
 
Meanwhile, gunfire erupted Wednesday close to an advance team of U.N. observers, giving a taste of the challenge facing a mission to monitor a shaky week-old truce that has so far failed to stop Syria’s violence.
 
Also Wednesday, Syria rejected U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon’s call for beefing up the number of U.N. monitors, with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem saying a team of 250 observers was more than enough.
 
“We are at a crucial turning point,” Clinton said. “Either we succeed with ... the Annan plan with the help of monitors ... or Assad will squander his last chance before additional measures have to be considered.”
 
Clinton will attend a meeting of 14 foreign ministers in Paris Thursday to discuss the situation in Syria. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the meeting will send a “strong message” to Damascus.
 
The White House Wednesday criticized the Syrian government for “insincerity” over its continued shelling of opponents despite a cease-fire and warned of “next steps” by the international community unless the attacks stop.
 
Protesters denouncing Assad had surrounded the cars of U.N. observers as they toured the town of Erbeen near the capital, Damascus, when automatic weapons’ fire sent the crowds scurrying for safety.
 
There were no reports of casualties. But scenes of monitors’ vehicles immobilized in a crowd followed by pictures of men running away while gunfire rattled in the air were an ominous echo of an earlier Arab League monitoring mission that collapsed in failure in January.
 
The advance party of a half a dozen U.N. peacekeepers in blue berets, led by Col. Ahmad Himmiche of Morocco, was touring the vicinity of Damascus in two white U.N. Land Cruisers with a Syrian police escort when trouble began. Their cars were mobbed by protesters chanting demands to arm the rebel Free Syrian Army. A banner was plastered on one U.N. car reading: “The butcher continues killings. The observers continue observing, and the people continue with their revolution. We bow only to God.”
 
A video segment posted on YouTube showed the U.N. vehicles moving slowly down a street flanked on both sides by crowds of civilians when gunshots sounded somewhere up ahead and the men turned and ran for safety.
 
While the truce has held in some parts of Syria since Assad pledged to enforce it last week, in strong opposition areas such as Homs, Hama, Idlib and Deraa the army has kept up attacks on rebels, using heavy weapons in violation of the pledge by Damascus to pull back.
 
The army kept up its shelling of targets in the city of Homs, with explosions rocking the battered Khalidiyeh quarter and plumes of black smoke drifting over the rooftops.
 
In northern Idlib province, six members of the security forces were killed by a bomb placed by an “armed terrorist group,” state news agency SANA said. It was the second such attack in two days.
 
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Wednesday on Assad to send tanks back into barracks to prove that it is fully implementing an international peace plan.
 
Moallem told a news conference in Beijing that no more than 250 truce monitors were needed, and they should come from what he called “neutral” countries such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, all of which have been more sympathetic to Assad than the West and the Arab League states.
 
Ban says more monitors and aircraft are needed to supervise a truce in a state of 23 million, after 13 months of fighting that has killed more than 10,000 people.
 
With the flashpoint cities in Syria scattered over several hundred kilometers, Ban said he had asked the European Union if it could supply helicopters and planes to make the proposed U.N. monitoring mission independently mobile. But Moallem said any needed air transport would be supplied by Syria.
 
Video of the U.N. monitors filmed by activists showed mission leader Himmiche walking through a tight throng of demonstrators, wearing a U.N. blue beret and flak jacket. He got into his vehicle where he spoke on a loud-hailer, apparently asking the crowd to move back and let the cars move out. Any shots were not aimed at the observers, he later told Reuters TV: “We did not come under fire.”
 
Equipment for the mission, including vehicles, is already being transported to Syria via Beirut from a U.N. logistics base in Brindisi, Italy and Prague in the Czech Republic. Four C-130 transports have flown 10 4x4 vehicles to the Lebanese capital for delivery to the mission.
 
Separately, Turkey intercepted Wednesday a vessel in the Mediterranean suspected of carrying weapons and ammunition to Syria.
 
“We received information that the vessel has a cargo of arms and ammunition headed for Syria,” a diplomatic source told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that Turkish authorities would search the vessel later in the day.
 
The Antigua and Barbuda flagged “Atlantic Cruiser” belongs to a German company, the source added.