Damascus, January 23: Syria has condemned a new Arab League initiative that calls on President Bashar al-Assad to cede power by holding early elections and forming a “national unity government”.
Syrian state television, quoting an unnamed official source, said early on Monday morning that the resolution, passed on Sunday night, contradicted the will of the Syrian people and was a violation of its national sovereignty.
The source said the resolution was part of a conspiracy against the Syrian people.
The Arab League called on Assad to delegate power to his vice president and for elections to be held under a “national unity government,” the latest steps in a slow-moving diplomatic effort to end 10 months of bloody uprising.
The bloc’s members agreed to a political initiative that would call for a unity government and early elections to end the crisis, the Qatari prime minister said after a meeting of the 22-member body in Cairo.
The new plan envisioned the “peaceful departure of the Syrian regime” and resembled the arrangement in Yemen, where Gulf nations convinced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to delegate power and leave the country, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, said.
Al Thani said the league would ask the United Nations Security Council to support its plan for transition.
“After the establishment of the government of national unity, there has to be a referendum and preparation for new elections. The Arab League’s secretary-general is to send a new special envoy to Syria, and will call on the international community to support this national unity government to fulfill its functions,” he said.
He also reiterated the Arab League’s demands that the violence in Syria be brought to an end, that political detainees be released, that the Syrian military pull out of cities and that citizens be allowed to demonstrate peacefully.
The league has called on the opposition and government to begin a new round of dialogue “within two weeks”.
‘Arab solution’
Al-Thani said that while the league was taking its case to the Security Council, it was not in favour of an international military intervention.
“We are looking into an Arab solution for this. We are not looking for a military intervention. The decision was by consensus, except Algeria which had some reservations. Lebanon has abstained, and we appreciate their situation there and we thank them for their co-operation,” he said.
He also announced that the Arab League’s observer mission in Syria would be extended, and that the observers would be given additional equipment after the head of the monitoring mission, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi of Sudan, said he wanted his mandate to be stengthened.
“We understand that al-Dabi has said to the Syrian committee that the mission has not gained enough momentum yet to get a full judgment on it,” reported Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna from Cairo.
“He said that he needed more time with the added monitors that he’s received in recent weeks and the added geographical places in which the monitoring mission is now extended to see if this mission can in fact work.”
Nabil ElAraby, the League’s secretary-general, said that Syria had not fulfilled its obligations, and that was why the observers’ mission had been extended.
But Saudi Arabia said it would withdraw its observers from Syria because Damascus had not kept its promises in regard to the mission.
Syria’s main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has criticised the Arab League mission, saying that the conditions under which the observers have been forced to work, escorted by Syrian troops, did not allow them to present an objective report.
The SNC formally asked the league on Saturday to refer the Syrian crisis to the UN Security Council.
“We think that when the Arab League refers the case to the United Nations and to the Security Council the situation will change,” Basma ElKadamny, an SNC spokesperson, said in Cairo.
Fresh violence
Sunday’s meeting came amid reports of clashes between Syrian government troops and army defectors in Douma, a suburb of the capital, Damascus.
“Apparently there were some clashes between the regime’s army and the FSA [Free Syrian Army] but the FSA has gone back to its positions,” Rafif Jouejati, a spokeswoman for the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) activist network, told Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut in neighbouring Lebanon, said the FSA appeared to be gaining strength in Doumam which had been a protest hub for some time.
“Last night there were conflicting accounts that the Syrian security forces were forced to retreat because of resistance from the FSA. What is clear is that neither side is in control [of the area],” our correspondent said.
Anti-Assad activist groups say that security forces fired on anti-government protesters in several locations around Damascus on Sunday, including Rankous and Douma, and in Karm al-Zaitoun in Homs.
Activists say that hundreds of people have been killed since the monitors arrived in Syria, with some reporting the deaths of as many as 740 civilians in the last month.
Critics say the Arab mission has only provided diplomatic cover for Assad to pursue a crackdown that has already killed more than 5,000 people since anti-government protests erupted in March 2011, according to a UN count.
—Agencies