Jaafari called President Bashar al-Assad a reformer who has been working to effect change by issuing decrees that, among other things, lifted the decades-old emergency law and allowed peaceful demonstrations.  "If you demonstrate peacefully, you are protected by the government," he said. "If you resort to violence, then any government in the world -- in order to maintain peace and order -- would utilize its forces to stop violence and vandalism and aggression against buildings as well as against innocent civilians."  Syria's own National Investigation Commission has already undertaken an investigation into the violence against civilians and the military, and will issue its findings at a later date, he said. "So we are doing our homework; we don't need help from anybody."  He urged the Security Council to rely on official reports, not on media reports.  Jaafari's remarks came on the same day that the Syrian Human Rights Information Link reported that more than 400 people have died since March 18 in incidents linked to the government crackdown on protesters seeking reform.  While the vast majority are apparently civilians, the group's list describes a few of the dead as members of the army or police.  The United Nations has said it has information that 76 people were killed last week on Friday alone, apparently during peaceful marches, and that the death toll from that day could be much higher.  CNN cannot independently confirm death tolls and witness accounts of the bloody crackdown. The Syrian government has not granted CNN access to the country.  U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice called the violence wielded by the government of Syria "abhorrent and deplorable," adding, "The outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end, and now."  The Syrian government's repeal of its emergency law and allowance for peaceful demonstrations "were clearly not serious, given the continued violent repression against protesters," she said.
Syria's ambassador to the United Nations rejected Tuesday a call for an independent investigation into the killings of hundreds of demonstrators by government forces."Syria has a government, has a