Monday, 13 February 2012

Arab League Agrees To Back Syrian Opposition

Further Ostracizing beleaguered President Bashar al-Assad in the Arab world, the Arab League on Sunday agreed to back the Syrian Opposition and decided to send a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping mission to the strife-torn country.


Arab Foreign Ministers who met at the League headquarters in the Egyptian capital Cairo also announced the end of its earlier mission to that Middle East country as it failed to end the raging violence there.

"How long will we stay as onlookers to what is happening to the brotherly Syrian people, and how much longer will we grant the Syrian regime one period after another so it can commit more massacres against its people?" Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal asked the conference.

"At our meeting today I call for decisive measures, after the failure of the half-solutions," he said, adding that "the Arab League should ... open all channels of communication with the Syrian Opposition and give all forms of support to it."

A resolution adopted at the Foreign Ministers' meet called for "opening communication channels with the Syrian Opposition and providing all forms of political and material support to it." The conference urged the Opposition parties to close their ranks and remain united.

All the six member-countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) had expelled Syrian envoys from their respective countries in protest against the continued crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters in that country.

Meanwhile, media reports said Syria "categorically rejected" the Arab League resolution which, Syrian envoy to Cairo Yusuf Ahmed said, "reflected the hysteria of these governments."

The resolution is expected to put increased diplomatic pressure on the Russia-China axis which vetoed a U.N. resolution seeking to condemn the Assad regime for the brutal suppression of dissent.

According to a U.N. estimate, more than 5,000 people have been killed and thousands detained since a popular uprising against the Assad regime broke out in March last. However, rights organizations put the death toll at over 7,000.

Bashar al-Assad has been in power in Syria for the last 11 years since the death of his father Hafez al-Assad who ruled the Arab country for more than three decades.

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