UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Sunday urged Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to stop killing his own people, saying the path of repression was a “dead end,” as Damascus announced a general amnesty for crimes committed during the unrest.
“Today, I say again to President Assad of Syria: Stop the violence. Stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end,” Ban said in a keynote address at a conference in Beirut on democracy in the Arab world.
“The winds of change will not cease to blow. The flame ignited in Tunisia will not be dimmed,” he added.
Ban’s comments came as the Syrian president announced a general amnesty for crimes committed during the popular unrest that has rocked the country over the past 10 months.
“President Assad issued a decree stipulating a general amnesty for crimes committed during the events between March 15, 2011 and January 15, 2012,” the official SANA news agency reported.
But it qualified the announcement by saying the amnesty covered infringements of the law on peaceful demonstrations, the possession of unlawful weapons and army desertion. The opposition Muslim Brotherhood dismissed the amnesty, describing it — the third of its kind since the uprising began — as “neither serious nor credible.”
“The regime is trying to make its unrealistic plans for reconciliation and national dialogue credible, and it is in this context that it is making such announcements, for propaganda purposes,” the group added. Releasing prisoners is one of the key conditions of an Arab League roadmap approved by Syria in November to end the country’s crisis, which the UN estimates has claimed more than 5,000 lives. Since November, the regime has announced that it will release nearly 4,000 prisoners “without blood on their hands.”
Syria’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters has brought increased pressure from its former allies.
The emir of Qatar said in an interview with US network CBS that he favoured dispatching Arab troops to Syria to “stop the killing,” a proposal described by former Arab League chief and Egyptian presidential hopeful Amr Mussa as “very important.”
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani’s interview with “60 Minutes” is the first public call by an Arab leader for an Arab military presence in Syria. The comments by the emir, whose wealthy nation once enjoyed cordial ties with Damascus, come with the Arab League set to review the work of its Syria monitoring mission later this month, amid increasing concern about its failure to stem the killing.
“There has been partial progress until now but there is daily bloodshed in Syria that the League aims to end,” League chief Nabil al-Arabi told AFP in Oman, adding that the mission will be reviewed at a January 21 meeting in Cairo. Syrian opposition activists have expressed disappointment at the mission, with critics saying it has been out-maneuvered by the government in Damascus.
On the political front, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe decried the “silence” of the UN Security Council on Syria’s deadly crackdown, two days after Britain sharply criticised Russia for refusing to support Security Council moves against Assad.
“The massacre continues, the silence of the Security Council too. This situation is becoming intolerable,” he said on Sunday, during a visit to Myanmar.
In October, Russia and China vetoed a Western draft resolution that would have condemned Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Russia later circulated an alternative that would have pointed the finger at both sides.
Juppe’s British counterpart William Hague said on Sunday that there was “no serious prospect” at the moment for a UN no-fly zone in Syria like the one imposed over Libya last year.
UN chief tells Assad path of repression is ‘dead end’
