French government calls for independent assessment of Syrian unrest

PARIS HAS called for an independent assessment of the unrest in Syria following a grenade attack that killed French television reporter Gilles Jacquier during a pro-government rally in Homs on Wednesday. Seven civilians also died in the attack and a Dutch journalist was among the wounded.

Arab League monitors yesterday interviewed witnesses at the site where Jacquier was killed and visited the hospital where the wounded were being treated. French ambassador to Syria Eric Chevalier also visited the site.

The exiled opposition Syrian National Council blamed the government for the incident. The council said the government’s aim was to intimidate journalists and monitors and force them to leave Syria. The government argued the attack proved it was battling armed insurgents who had taken over several quarters of Homs.

A second Arab League monitor, a Sudanese, has quit the team tasked with overseeing Syria’s implementation of the organisation’s plan to halt violence there.

The monitor said he agreed with the assessment of his former colleague, Algerian Anwar Malek, who resigned from the team this week, that the effort was a failure.

“The mission . . . does not serve the citizens. It does not serve anything,” said the Sudanese monitor.

He said violence continued, tanks and troops had not been withdrawn from urban areas, and all prisoners had not been freed in line with the plan.

There was “strong oppression” and “suffering, a lot of suffering, more than you can imagine”, in Homs, which he toured.

“This is a very big problem and it is related . . . to the will of the Syrian authorities to co-operate with the delegation in a genuine manner and without manoeuvring,” he said, adding that the mission did not have the expertise to carry out its work. Other monitors were considering withdrawing, out of fear or frustration.

The monitors had witnessed the killing of 19 protesters by government forces in the northeastern town of Deir al-Zor on Tuesday, he said.

At the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, mission operations chief Adnan Khodeir said Mr Malek had quit for “health reasons”, while the Sudanese monitor left for “personal reasons”.

Mission commander Sudanese general Mustafa al-Dabi said Mr Malek’s charges were “baseless” as he never left his hotel room while in Homs, “pretending he was sick”.

Locally-based activists said 18 people were killed yesterday.