Syria Is Likely to Accept Arab League Plan for Ending Months of Violence
Syria is expected to accept an Arab League proposal that calls on President Bashar al-Assad’s government to get its tanks off the streets and start a dialogue with his opponents as a means of ending months of unrest, Egypt’s state-run Middle East News Agency said.
Syria’s ambassador to Egypt, Youssef Ahmed, flew from Damascus to Cairo, where he is due to present his country’s response to the plan when the league’s foreign ministers meet today to discuss Syria. The Syrian delegation and the Arab group’s ministerial committee “agreed on the final paper on the situation in Syria and the official announcement will be made today at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo,” the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said.
Under the proposal, a national conference would be set up for talks between the government and the opposition under Arab League supervision to reach a peaceful end to the crisis, MENA said, citing unidentified diplomats. The plan also calls for the release of people detained since the protests began in mid- March. As a condition of Syria’s acceptance, Arab satellite channels must tone down what it says is a media campaign against the country, MENA reported.
“Assad will entertain any kind of reform so long as it leaves his family in power in the presidency and doesn’t undermine his loyalist monopoly of the security institutions,” said Joshua Landis, a Syria specialist who directs the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. “The Arab League is trying to lay down the law and tell Syria this is their last chance to avoid foreign military intervention, and if they don’t take the Arab way out, which is compromise and reform including free presidential elections and a multiparty system, they are going to get blown out.”
‘Threat Possibly Empty’
The Arab League “threat is possibly empty,” while Syria’s opposition will see the plan as “tinkering around the edges,” Landis said by phone yesterday.
Protests against Assad’s rule were inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt. Assad has blamed the unrest on Islamic militants and foreign provocateurs, and sent security forces to crush the demonstrations. More than 4,000 protesters have been killed, according to Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.
“An immediate implementation of a broad reform package without some form of agreement with the opposition is unlikely,” Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington, said in response to e-mailed questions late yesterday.
Syria’s opposition is trying to follow the path taken by Libya’s rebels, who formed a transitional council that became the main governing authority in the North African country in August after they seized Tripoli, the capital. Syrian activists on Oct. 2 formed a council to coordinate efforts to end Assad’s rule and stop his deadly crackdown on protesters.
To contact the reporters on this story: Mariam Fam in Cairo at mfam1@bloomberg.net; Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut, Lebanon, at mderhally@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Louis Meixler at lmeixler@bloomberg.net.
Rate this Page