Syria scuttles truce plan with new demands

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A U.N.-brokered plan to stop the bloodshed in Syria effectively collapsed Sunday after President Bashar Assad's government raised new, last-minute demands that the country's largest rebel group swiftly rejected.

The truce plan, devised by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, was supposed to go into effect on Tuesday, with a withdrawal of Syrian forces from population centers, followed within 48 hours by a cease-fire by both sides in the uprising against four decades of repressive rule by the Assad family.