Syrian authorities fired tear gas on tens of thousands of Syrians who took to the streets of Homs on Tuesday against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as Arab League peace monitors began to tour the flashpoint city and the army was seen subtly withdrawing its tanks, following battles that killed 34 people. The observers want to determine if Assad is keeping his promise to implement a peace plan to end his uncompromising crackdown on nine months of revolt that has generated an armed uprising, edging the country towards civil war. Activist reports just before the monitors arrived said up to a dozen tanks were seen leaving Baba Amr, one of Homs’s most embattled neighborhoods, while others were being hidden. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, relaying activist reports from its base in Britain, said protesters had gathered in Khalidiya, one of four districts where there has been bloodshed as rebels fight security forces using tanks. Activists say they want to impress on the Arab League mission that it must not let its teams be hoodwinked by the state and be shown places where life is relatively normal.
As the monitors arrived, tanks were seen leaving the Baba Amr district which activists say was pounded for the past four days. Hundreds have been killed in Homs in the revolt. On the border with Turkey, Syrian forces killed several men from an “armed terrorist group” trying to cross into Syria, the state news agency SANA said on Tuesday. The northern border has become the route of choice for infiltration by army defectors fighting to topple Assad. SANA also reported that said “an armed terrorist group targeted and sabotaged a gas pipeline near Rastan in Homs province” on Tuesday. The pipeline has been attacked several times in recent months and has come back into operation after outages each time.
MEETING WITH HOMS GOVERNOR: The monitors started by meeting the governor of Homs, Syria’s Dunia television channel said. An Arab League source said they intended to tell him where they wanted to go, based on requests from people in Homs who have witnessed the violence. Assad’s opponents fear that the monitors – who arrived in the country on Monday after weeks of negotiations with Arab states – will be used as a cloak of respectability for a government that will hide the extent of violence. They say tanks have been withdrawn before from restive cities such as Deraa and Hama, only to return later.
Syria stalled the Arab League for months before accepting the monitoring mission, the first significant international intervention on the ground since the start of the popular revolt inspired by Arab pro-democracy uprisings this year.
The Arab mission, led by Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, is starting with 50 monitors who arrived in Damascus on Monday and will be split into five teams of ten. About 100 more monitors are to follow soon.
The teams will use government transport, according to Dabi. But that arrangement likely to fuel charges by the anti-Assad opposition that the monitoring mission will be impeded and hoodwinked from the outset. Arab League delegates insist the mission will nevertheless maintain the “element of surprise” and be able to go wherever it chooses with no notice. Parts of Homs are defended by the Free Syrian Army, made up of defectors from the regular armed forces, who say they have tried to protect civilians. Meanwhile, France warned Syria on Tuesday against attempts at concealment or manipulation as Arab League monitors arrived in the protest hub of Homs after reports that dozens of protesters had been killed.
“So far the Damascus regime has spared no effort to disguise the reality” of repression in Syria, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told journalists. “The international community will be particularly watchful for any attempt at concealment or manipulation that the Damascus regime might try,” he said. “We call for vigilance and ask that the Arab League observers be allowed to carry out their mission without hindrance,” Valero said, noting that “as the first observers arrived in Homs, the tanks left the city.” “The observers must have access to the entire city and be able to clearly and independently establish what the situation is and bring about an end to the violence,” he said.
