By Aida Alami and Massoud A. Derhally
The Arab League gave Syria three days to end bloodshed and allow observers in or face economic sanctions, as attacks on Syria’s forces by military defectors escalated the violence that has raged for eight months.
“We shall stop wasting time,” Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jasim Al Thani said during a news conference after the Arab League meeting yesterday in Rabat,Morocco, to discuss President Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on dissent. “People are getting killed.”
He gave no details on the prospective sanctions, saying only that such action would be a response if the Syrian government doesn’t end its crackdown on protesters as called for in an Arab League peace plan.
“If there aren’t any effective measures immediately to stop the killing and release detainees, sanctions will be imposed,” saidSheikh Hamad, who is also prime minister.
A group of military defectors known as the Free Syrian Army assaulted a base near Damascus linked to Air Force Intelligence yesterday, Ammar al-Wawi, a defector who is among its leaders, said by phone from an undisclosed location without giving details.
The rebel force destroyed an armored personnel carrier at a base used by the intelligence agency in the city of Aleppo on Nov. 15, he said. Air Force Intelligence has helped the government put down the protests.
The Cairo-based Arab League’s action comes amid mounting international pressure on Assad, including calls for him to quit. The group announced on Nov. 12 that it would suspend Syria’s membership as his government continued its assaults on protesters after agreeing 10 days earlier to the bloc’s plan for ending the bloodshed.
Free Syrian Army
After the meeting yesterday, the Arab League confirmed Syria’s suspension from the group’s meetings until it withdraws tanks from cities, releases detained protesters and starts supervised talks with the opposition.
The claim by the Free Syrian Army, which says more than 25,000 officers and soldiers have defected to the group, comes amid an upsurge of violence this week that included an ambush targeting Assad’s forces. The attack by defectors left 34 government soldiers dead, pushing the number of people killed on Nov. 14 to as many as 90, Mahmoud Merei, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, said yesterday.
The increasing violence is the fault of the Assad regime, said U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner.
‘Dangerous Path’
“Let’s be very clear that it is the brutal tactics of Assad and his regime in dealing with what began as a nonviolent movement that is now taking Syria down a very dangerous path,” he said yesterday inWashington.
France is withdrawing its ambassador to Syria after embassies and consulates of various countries were attacked in Damascus this week, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said yesterday during a parliamentary debate in Paris. The embassies of Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Syria were attacked yesterday, Al Arabiya television reported.
The U.S. ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, is due to return to Damascus next week, Toner said.
Arab and Turkish foreign ministers, meeting in Rabat before the League’s discussions began, called for a solution that respects Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“The ministers stressed the importance of the stability and unity of Syria and the need for the resolution of the crisis without any foreign intervention,” according to a statement.
Detainees Freed
Syria said Nov. 15 that it had freed 1,180 detainees involved in protests who are “without blood on their hands.” To mark the Muslim observance of Eid al-Adha, which started Nov. 6, Syria had already released 553 other detainees “involved in the events,” the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said.
A group of activists and opposition figures were meeting with Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Arabi in Cairo yesterday, Merei said.
More than 4,500 protesters have been killed since the unrest broke out in mid-March, according to Merei and Qurabi. The United Nations estimates more than 3,500 deaths. Assad has blamed foreign provocateurs and Islamic militants for the violence.
To contact the reporters on this story: Aida Alami in Cairo at aalami2; Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut, Lebanon atmderhally
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden atbarden
