Canada tightened the sanctions Friday on Syria, targeting President Bashar al-Assad's wife, mother, sister and sister-in-law a week after the European Union made a similar move.

Stepping up its sanctions as fighting raged after an embattled Assad said he had accepted a peace plan to put an end to a year of violence that has left over 9,000 dead, Canada said it sought a "Syria that respects the fundamental rights of all its people."

President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan to end the crisis in Syria and vowed to make every effort to make it succeed, the state agency SANA said Thursday.

Assad, however, stressed the U.N.-Arab League envoy's plan would succeed only if "terrorist acts" backed by foreign powers stopped across the country.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday stressed “his keenness on national unity” in Lebanon, stressing that revolt-hit Syria was “heading towards stability.”

During a meeting with ex-MP Faisal al-Daoud, head of the Arab Lebanese Struggle Movement, Assad said he was “reassured about the situation in Syria, which is heading towards stability and the implementation of reforms in a manner that would meet the aspirations of the Syrian people.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday it was "short-sighted" to think that the crisis in Syria would be solved if President Bashar al-Assad agreed to Western calls to step down.

"To think that Assad's departure would mean the removal of all the problems is a very short-sighted position and everyone understands that if this happened the conflict would most likely continue," the ITAR-TASS news agency quoted Medvedev as telling Russian reporters at a summit in Seoul.

Lebanon has a moral obligation to support the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and should use upcoming elections to "reject the apologists of Assad's butchery," Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman has said.

In strongly worded remarks, Feltman paid tribute to the Lebanese who took to the streets after ex-prime minister Rafik Hariri's assassination in 2005.

Free Patriotic Movement leader MP Michel Aoun on Wednesday warned that the violence in Syria would spill over to Lebanon if the embattled Syrian regime was ousted, rejecting the presence of what he called “Takfiris on our border.”

“Those who backed Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006 are the same ones who are backing the inner war against Syria, that’s why we should think of good neighborliness and the neighborhood’s security, as we cannot live with Takfiri groups on our border that are interacting with the Lebanese domestic scene,” Aoun said on the 23rd anniversary of the so-called Liberation War he waged in 1989 against Syrian forces stationed in Lebanon.

The world community must document the atrocities being carried out by the government of Syria against its people to ensure justice is done, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.

"We must document the evidence so that those guilty of crimes may be held responsible, whatever it takes," Cameron, who held talks at the White House with President Barack Obama, told reporters at a joint press conference.

"Assad has killed so many people that he deserves a fate worse than Gadhafi’s," spits Ammar al-Wawi, a one-time Syrian officer now second-in-command of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

And despite the fact that the FSA, "armed only with Kalashnikovs and pistols," is at an overwhelming disadvantage against the tanks and artillery of Bashar al-Assad's army, Wawi says he is convinced the president will fall.

Hizbullah on Sunday claimed that “there are some March 14 associates in power who are involved in facilitating arming and infiltration into Syria,” describing the U.S. embassy in Lebanon as “a military operations room against Syria.”

“The countries that conspired against Syria have admitted that they had engaged in an uncalculated adventure and nowadays we’re noticing how they have started tactical, political retreats,” Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, deputy head of Hizbullah’s Executive Council, said.

Fadel Shaker, a Lebanese pop star turned outspoken supporter of Salafism, an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam, on Sunday stressed the “need” for artists to support the beleaguered Syrian people, urging them to “reject the massacres” taking place in Syria.

Speaking at an anti-Syrian regime sit-in organized in Beirut’s Martyrs Square by Salafist Sheikh Ahmed al-Assir, imam of the Sidon’s Bilal bin Rabah Mosque, Shaker said: “Haven’t they seen the massacres in Homs, Daraa, Deir al-Zour and other regions?”