OVER the 13 months of upheaval in Syria, President Bashar Assad has repeatedly promised to stop the violence. Earlier this year he dashed Arab League hopes of mediating a solution, unleashing his army to blast cities such as Homs, Syria's third-biggest, and dragging the death toll over 9,000. Hardly surprising, then, that scepticism greeted reports, on March 27th, of Mr Assad's agreement to the plan for a settlement recently devised by Kofi Annan, the joint UN-Arab League emissary.

Syria's seemingly inexorable drift towards greater tragedy justifies doubt, but this time it may be slightly misplaced. For one thing, Mr Assad is not the only one to sign on to the Annan plan—his allies Iran, China and Russia have too. So, hesitantly, has Syria's main opposition group, the Syrian National Council.

And although the plan appears timid compared with the tougher Arab League effort, which had stipulated Mr Assad's departure from office, it does have some teeth. Paying personal visits to Beijing and Moscow, the former UN secretary-general seems to have coaxed Mr Assad's Chinese and Russian friends, hitherto reluctant to endorse anything that smelled of outside intervention, into supporting an approach that opens the door to this option, if only by a crack.

Much of Mr Annan's plan reiterates Arab League demands: Mr Assad must pull out troops from cities, release political prisoners and talk to the opposition. But compliance would be monitored by the UN rather than the Arab League, whose authority Mr Assad's regime no longer respects. That could mean UN boots on the ground, and a potentially concerted international response to Syrian non-compliance. A stipulated daily two-hour ceasefire between the army and rebel forces, meant to allow in aid, could save lives, too. Food and medicine are scarce across besieged parts of the country and among over 200,000 internally displaced Syrians.

Yet it is hard to shake the scepticism entirely. “A welcome bandage rather than a long-term solution,” is how a Syrian analyst describes the plan. Mr Assad, whose forces' killing of 50 protesters overshadowed Mr Annan's announcement, is unlikely to pay more than lip service to any binding calls for him to back off. If he did relinquish ground, Syria's city squares would be quickly overrun by protesters chanting for his downfall.

Neither need Mr Assad be too fearful of breaking his promise. The plan's vague wording gives the regime wiggle room and has created difficulties for the Syrian National Council, which views his resignation as a condition for talks. The regime can look moderate by pointing out that its opponents' main strategy is to arm the insurgents banded under the Free Syrian Army. “This is not necessarily a sign of Russian progress,” cautions a diplomat at the UN. “They may veto a resolution even if the plan fails—and military intervention is off the table.”

Still, things are not looking all that rosy for Mr Assad. At a late March get-together in Istanbul, his fractious opponents bickered as usual but eventually agreed to unite behind the Syrian National Council ahead of a second gathering, on April 1st, of the Friends of Syria, a club of Syrian dissidents, Arab diplomats and Western opponents of the regime. By not rejecting out of hand the UN's push for a negotiated settlement and giving Mr Assad a chance to fail, the Council is playing wiser politics than usual.

Pressure on Mr Assad is growing elsewhere, too. Turkey became the most recent of many countries to shut its embassy in Damascus, the Syrian capital. Turkish and American leaders have pledged to send secure communications equipment to the internal opposition, which has steadily been regrouping after the vicious assaults of the past month. As the beleaguered rebels run out of ammunition, Mr Assad's more gung-ho enemies in the Gulf appear willing (though slow) to ship in arms. In sum, Mr Assad's rule continues to weaken.