Arab League pressures Syria

The Arab League said Sunday it would formally begin dialogue with the Syrian opposition and further measures to pressure the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Meeting in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers and diplomats said they planned to "open channels of communication with the Syrian opposition and offer full political and financial support, urging [the opposition] to unify its ranks."

They also called on the United Nations Security Council to form a joint UN-Arab League peacekeeping mission in Syria to replace a mission by the League which was called off last month following intensified violence. The peacekeepers would "oversee the implementation of a ceasefire."

The Arab ministers said their countries would "halt to all kinds of diplomatic cooperation with representatives of the Syrian regime in all states and organizations and international conferences," but would leave it to individual governments to implement that decision.

Shortly after the announcement, Syria issued an angry response, "categorically" rejecting the notion of a UN-Arab League peacekeeping force. The Syrian ambassador to Cairo said the move "reflects the hysteria of these governments" after failing to get foreign intervention at the UN Security Council.

According to Syrian state television, the government described the Arab League resolutions, which come one week after China and Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria, as "a hostile act that targets Syria's stability and security."

Also part of the Arab efforts, Tunisia said it would host the first meeting on February 24 of a "Friends of Syria" contact group made up of Arab and other states and backed by Western powers.

General resigns

Ahead of the Cairo meeting, the League accepted the resignation of the Sudanese general in charge of its Syria mission on Sunday.

"I won't work one more time in the framework of the Arab League," General Mohammed al-Dabi, whose appointment had been criticized because of Sudan's own rights record, told news agency Reuters.

"I performed my job with full integrity and transparency but I won't work here again as the situation is skewed," he added.

Former Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdul-Illah al-Khatib has been nominated as the League's new envoy to Syria.

Meanwhile, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said renewed fighting in the besieged central province of Homs on Sunday resulted in the deaths of at least five people, most of them civilians. On Saturday, the Observatory put the death toll for the day across the country at 45.

dfm/ccp (Reuters, AP, AFP)