The Arab League on Monday pressed on with its mission to halt 10 months of bloodshed in Syria despite charges it was only serving to cover up the regime’s deadly crackdown on protests. Turkey, which has openly called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, meanwhile, called on the opposition to keep up its resistance through “peaceful means.” The opposition Muslim Brotherhood slammed the League after the pan-Arab organisation decided on Sunday to extend its observer mission.
“It is clear that the observer mission in Syria seeks to cover up the crimes of the Syrian regime by giving it the time and opportunity to kill our people and break their will,” Brotherhood spokesman Zuhair Salem said. After a meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council on Sunday in Istanbul, a foreign ministry spokesman in Ankara urged the opposition to carry on with their resistance. “The Syrian opposition demands democracy and we told them during a meeting yesterday (Sunday) that this should be done through peaceful means,” he told AFP, referring to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s talks with the SNC. At a meeting in Cairo the same day, an Arab ministerial committee gave its widely criticised observer mission to Syria the green light to carry on and pledged to boost the number of monitors.
The committee “decided to give Arab League observers the necessary time to continue their mission according to the protocol,” which sets a one-month term, renewable with the agreement of both sides. The ministers agreed to increase the number of observers and said they may seek “technical assistance from the United Nations” in the face of unrest that the world body said last month has cost more than 5,000 lives. The committee urged Damascus “to fully and immediately implement its commitments” under the Arab plan, calling on all parties “to immediately stop all forms of violence.”
The Syrian Revolution General Commission, grouping activists on the ground, said the meeting fell “short of expectations.” The League should use the “necessary means” to halt the violence or admit failure, it said. The head of the mission, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, is to give a report to the League on January 19 on Syria’s compliance with the peace plan, the ministers said. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al-Thani, who chaired the Cairo meeting, called on Syria to “take a historic decision” to stop the bloodshed. A report by the observers discussed at the meeting showed that “killing has been reduced. But even one killing (is too much),” said Sheikh Hamad, whose country has taken a lead role in efforts to resolve the crisis.
Sheikh Hamad said the League hoped to raise the number of observers to 300 “within the next few days” from around 163 now deployed. The team of Arab League monitors has been in Syria since December 26 to oversee a deal to protect civilians, but the death toll has mounted despite its presence. Security force fire killed at least three more civilians on Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP in Nicosia.
Two people were shot dead in the flashpoint central province of Hama and near Damascus, while a woman was killed in an attack by security forces in Idlib province of northwest Syria, the Britain-based watchdog said. It called for Arab monitors to travel to a region of Hama where it said 12 tanks and armoured personnel carriers had been deployed in violation of the peace plan. A television channel close to the regime, Dunia, said a convoy of Arab monitors came under fire from a “terrorist group” in Syria’s third largest city, Homs, wounding a driver. Stepping up its attacks on Doha, the official press in Damascus on Monday accused the Qatari premier of “inciting violence” and working to sabotage the Arab mission.
His role at the meeting in Cairo “went beyond interference in the internal affairs of Syria, constituting a declaration of war,” said the daily Tishrin. In an apparent vote of confidence, Pope Benedict XVI said he hoped the Arab League mission would help promote dialogue between the regime and its opponents. “I pray for a rapid end to the bloodshed and the beginning of a fruitful dialogue between the political forces, encouraged by the presence of independent observers,” the head of the Roman Catholic Church said.
