Monitors' term in Syria may be extended

THE HEAD of Arab League monitors in Syria arrived in Cairo yesterday to report on the initial operations of the mission one month after Damascus agreed to its deployment. An unnamed official said the monitors’ mandate is likely to be extended for another month.

“The killings are less, the protests increase,” Gen Mustafa al- Dabi said. The monitors, deployed at 17 locations around the country, will remain at their bases until the extension is approved. At least 5,400 civilians and 2,200 security personnel have been killed since unrest erupted 10 months ago.

The report will be discussed tomorrow by the six-member com- mission on Syria before a meeting on Sunday of the organisation’s 22 members. Qatar has called for the dispatch of Arab peacekeeping troops, a proposition rejected by Syria as well as Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania.

League operations chief said ministerial discussions would focus on whether the monitors would adopt “a new approach” in their efforts to halt violence, effect the full withdrawal of Syrian troops and tanks from cities and towns, and secure the release of all political detainees.

Supporters of the mission say deaths have been reduced since the arrival of the mission on December 26th while detractors, including Anwar Malek, a monitor who resigned, argue that it is a “farce”. A coalition of 140 human rights bodies in the region have urged the league to withdraw the monitors and to call upon the UN Security Council to intervene.

China and Russia have rejected this option. Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who said he had co-ordinated policy with his Chinese counterpart, warned that outside involvement in anti-government uprisings in Syria and the area could result in “a very big war that will cause suffering not only to countries in the region but also to states far beyond its boundaries”.

He said Moscow and Beijing would veto any council attempt to authorise strikes against Syria’s government. Russia would not back an arms embargo on Syria because it would deny arms to the government while its opponents would obtain weapons illegally.

Mr Lavrov’s stand was echoed by Hassan Abdul Azim, head of the Syria-based opposition National Co-ordination Committee. “We refuse . . . any type of foreign military intervention because it threatens the independence of our country.” An attempt to unite the committee with the exiled opposition Syrian National Council failed because the council favours external intervention.

Meanwhile, veteran opposition activist Michel Kilo has warned that army defectors belonging to the so-called Free Syrian Army threaten to drag Syria into “chaos without end”. However, al-Jazeera’s Nir Rosen, who spent two months in Syria, said the Free Syrian Army, as a single entity, was a “fiction”. He did observe though that there were “thousands of armed rebels” based in restive towns and villages.