BICOM

Syria yesterday rejected a new Arab League plan that aims to end the country’s 10-month crisis by calling on the regime and the opposition to form a national unity government within two months. The Syrian rejection, carried by the state-run news agency SANA, came a day after Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani told reporters in Cairo that the Arab League was launching a new initiative to solve the crisis.

Arab League foreign ministers also extended the widely criticised observer mission for another month, according to a statement from the 22-member organisation. Despite three options on the table during the Arab League meeting on Sunday – to end the mission and giving up its initiative, extending it, or turning the crisis over to the UN Security Council – only the option to extend the mission was acceptable. Due to opposition by some permanent members of the UN Security Council to any strict action against the Assad regime, the Arab league determined it had to continue its mission, despite its widely perceived failure.

Nevertheless, despite the continuation of the Arab League mission, Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told reporters that his country would pull out its observers because “the Syrian government did not implement the Arab plan.” He also urged Muslim countries, China, Russia, Europe and the US to put pressure on Assad’s government to stop the violence.

Saudi Arabia has been one of the harshest Arab critics of the crackdown and was among the first countries to recall its ambassador from Damascus last year in protest of the violence.