Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said his government was still considering whether to let the monitors stay for another month and criticized the Arab League for calling Assad to step down.
“Definitely the solution in Syria is not the solution suggested by the Arab League, which we have rejected,” he told a news conference. “They have abandoned their role as the Arab League and we no longer want Arab solutions to the crisis.”
Syria is becoming an Arab and international pariah for its harsh response to an uprising against Assad in which thousands of civilians, soldiers and policemen have been killed. Envoys to the Cairo-based League were meeting later in the day to discuss whether the monitoring mission has a future, Sudan’s ambassador to the 22-member body, Kamal Hassan Ali, said.
A League official said 55 Gulf Arab observers were being withdrawn from the 165-strong monitoring team. The Arab League demanded on Sunday that Assad step down in favor of a unity government to end the bloodshed, but said the observers should stay in Syria for another month.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said at the time his country was quitting the mission because Syria had not implemented any part of an Arab peace plan agreed in November. “The GCC states have decided to respond to the decision of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to withdraw its monitors from the Arab League delegation to Syria,” the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement.It said the GCC was “certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue, and that the Syrian regime would not abide by the Arab League’s resolutions.”
The Arab League’s demand for a change of government in Syria puts more pressure on the UN Security Council to overcome its divisions and take a stand on the bloodletting there.
The Arab observers deployed late last month to assess Syria’s compliance with an earlier Arab League plan.
“There has been some progress, but there has not been immediate or complete implementation as the Arab initiative requires,” Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said on Tuesday, adding that he would name a special envoy to Syria this week. A Syrian opposition group condemned the mission’s leader, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, for a report in which he highlighted violence by Assad’s adversaries as well as by the president’s security forces.
