League move ‘only buying time’ for Assad regime
The observers, whose mission began two weeks ago, have so far failed to stop a violent crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad in which the United Nations says more than 5,000 people have been killed in the past 10 months.
After a meeting in Cairo to review progress, the Arab League said the government had only partly implemented a pledge to stop the repression, free detainees and withdraw troops from cities.
It said it would add more monitors to the 165-strong team, ignoring calls to pull the plug on what critics say is a futile effort that provides a fig leaf for Assad to suppress opponents.
“The initial report is too vague, and it essentially buys the regime more time,” said Rima Fleihan, a member of the Syrian National Council, a leading opposition group in exile.
“We need to know what the League will do if the regime continues its crackdown in the presence of the monitors. At one point it needs to refer Syria to the UN Security Council.”
The Arab League appears divided over whether to take such a step, which in the case of Libya led to foreign military intervention that helped rebels topple Muammar Gaddafi.
Russia and China have opposed any Security Council move on Syria, while Western powers hostile to Assad have so far shown little appetite for Libya-style intervention in a country that sits in a far more combustible area of the Middle East.
“Continuing the mission of the observers in Syria, unless it is in great numbers, will give the regime more time to deal with the Syrian revolution,” said Rami Abdulrahman, of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He said the Syrian authorities had hidden tanks in military and security compounds or repainted armoured vehicles in blue police colours. Only a small number of the many thousands of detainees had been freed, he added.
Syrian officials say they are fighting “terrorism” by subversives armed from abroad, not a popular broad-based revolt against Assad family rule.
