Syria tells Arab League to head for UN ‘or moon’

Gulf Arab states withdrew their observers from Syria after it rejected an Arab League peace plan stipulating that President Bashar al-Assad surrender power, and the group’s chief called for UN help in ending Syria’s bloody upheaval.

Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moualem accused the League of plotting to engineer foreign intervention in the crisis, in which thousands of civilians and members of security forces have been killed in a 10-month-old uprising against Assad.

“Definitely the solution in Syria is not the solution suggested by the Arab League, which we have rejected,” Moualem said. “They have abandoned their role as the Arab League and we no longer want Arab solutions to the crisis.