An Arab League meeting opened Sunday to decide the future of its heavily criticised observer mission to unrest-swept Syria, where activists said army defectors briefly overran a protest hub near Damascus.
A League panel began closed-doors talks to hear a report on the mission ahead of a decisive meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers. Fierce clashes erupted late Saturday in Douma, just northeast of Damascus, after security forces shot dead four civilians at a funeral in the town, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Groups of deserters took control of all districts in the town of Douma … after fierce fighting” with Syrian security forces,” the Observatory’s chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP. “Dissident groups withdrew from the town and returned to their bases,” the Britain-based group later said in a statement, without giving a casualty toll for the operation.
Clashes also broke out on Sunday outside Douma between security forces and defectors in what appeared to be a bid by government troops to recapture the town, according to the Observatory. It said two civilians were shot dead on Sunday in Damascus province, including a 30-year-old man killed at a security forces’ checkpoint into Douma.
At a meeting of foreign ministers in Cairo, the Arab League looked set to extend and expand its observer mission, despite strong criticism that it has failed to stem 10 months of deadly violence. Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi was at the Cairo talks and due to chair a broader meeting of foreign ministers from the 22-member bloc to decide the future of the mission launched a month ago. Sunday’s report was being delivered by the mission’s chief, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi of Sudan, who wants his mandate needs to be strengthened, not scrapped, a League official said.
In a statement late Saturday, Dabi said the mission’s mandate was “to verify that the Syrian government has implemented the terms of an Arab League plan to solve the crisis, not to stop the bloodshed and violence.” But the opposition Syrian National Council has been lobbying for UN intervention and said it would reveal “a counter-report” later on Sunday to try to discredit Dabi’s account. The SNC said it also plans to send a delegation to the United Nations to press the Security Council for intervention, International pressure has been steadily growing on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with more than 5,400 people killed since anti-government protests broke out last March, according to UN figures.
The Arab League deployed observers in Syria for a mission on December 26, and there are presently about 165 monitors on the ground. The Local Coordination Committees, which organises anti-regime protests, said in a statement on Sunday that 976 people have since been killed in a bloody crackdown on dissent, despite the observer mission.
The SNC has appealed to the Arab League to turn the Syria crisis over to the United Nations. Its chief Burhan Ghaliun met on Saturday with Arabi to lobby for scrapping the observer mission. But a mission official, on condition of anonymity, has said the operation would be extended and the number of observers almost doubled to 300.
Deputy chief of operations Ali Jarush said Dabi is satisfied with its achievements so far and that “everything indicates the observer mission in Syria will be extended by a month.”
“Dabi sees that in the last phase the necessary thrust (of the operation) was achieved after more monitors were deployed and fanned across 20 areas and after they were provided with equipment and logistics,” he said. But the SNC charged that Dabi’s report would not be credible. Qatar has proposed that Arab troops be deployed in Syria, but Damascus rules out the proposal.
In violence on Saturday, a roadside bomb killed 17 detainees being transported in a prison truck in Idlib province in the northwest of the country, said the Observatory.
State news agency SANA said “an armed terrorist group” attacked the vehicle in Al-Mastouma area, “killing 14 prisoners and wounding 26 others.” Nine government troops were killed in clashes with dissident soldiers near a military roadblock in the central city of Maaret Numan, the Observatory reported. One deserter was also killed in the clash.
