Arab states may ask the U.N. Security Council to endorse their peace plan aimed at ending a Syrian crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad, Qatar’s foreign minister said after talks with Arab League ministers on Saturday.
Expressing frustration that Syria had not implemented the plan, six weeks after it was first agreed, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said the window for an Arab solution to the crisis was closing.
“If this matter is not solved in the weeks ahead, or couple of months, it will no longer be in Arab control,” Sheikh Hamad told journalists after an Arab ministerial committee meeting in Qatar. “That is what we told the Syrians from the beginning.”
Syria has conditionally approved a plan to send monitors to oversee implementation of the November 2 Arab League initiative, which calls on Assad to withdraw the army from urban areas, release political prisoners and hold talks with opponents.
But Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said Damascus was objecting to the League’s call for protection of Syrian civilians, saying members of the security forces were also being killed in the turmoil.
The United Nations says Assad’s crackdown on the protests, inspired by uprisings across the Arab world this year, has killed more than 5,000 people. Authorities blame gunmen for the violence and say 1,100 soldiers and police have been killed.
The Arab League suspended Syria and declared economic sanctions against Damascus over its failure to implement the initiative. The United States, European Union and neighboring Turkey have also imposed sanctions.
Long-time Syrian ally Russia took a step closer to the Western position on Thursday when it presented a surprise draft resolution at the United Nations which stepped up its criticism of the bloodshed in Syria.
Sheikh Hamad said that, in response to Moscow’s move, the Arab League would meet on Wednesday to decide whether “to ask the Security Council to adopt the Arab initiative and Arab resolutions instead of resolutions from other states.”
“We are not talking about military action but we will ask the Security Council to adopt the Arab initiative,” he added.
Any referral of the Arab plan to the United Nations would be likely to anger Damascus, which has accused unnamed Arab countries of trying to set the stage for foreign intervention.
The unrest is the most serious challenge to the 11-year rule of Assad, 46, whose family is from the minority Alawite sect and has ruled majority Sunni Muslim Syria since 1970.
An armed insurgency has begun to eclipse civilian protests, raising fears Syria could descend into civil war.
Two days ago army deserters killed 27 soldiers and security personnel in the southern province of Deraa, an activist group said. On Friday, activists said security forces