The secretary general of the Arab League was forced to step into a growing row over the conduct of the bloc's observer mission to Syria on Monday amid growing claims that it was colluding with the Assad regime to cover up the killing of protesters.
Syrian security forces walk towards anti-regime protesters in Homs Photo: AFP/GETTY
By Adrian Blomfield,
Middle East Correspondent
6:19PM GMT 02 Jan 2012
Nabil Elaraby claimed that, at the League's behest, Mr Assad had released 3,484 prisoners and pulled his tanks back from the centre of many cities.
But he conceded for the first time that the presence of the monitors had failed to prevent President Bashar al-Assad's security force from killing unarmed protesters.
Contradicting the claims of the mission's controversial chief, Lt Gen Mustafa al-Dabi, Mr Elaraby also acknowledged that government snipers were continuing to shoot at demonstrators. He demanded that the Syrian government abide by the terms of an Arab League peace plan by imposing an immediate ceasefire.
"Yes, there is still shooting and yes, there are still snipers," he told reporters at the league's headquarters in Cairo. "The objective is for us to wake up in the morning to hear that no one is killed. The mission's philosophy is to protect civilians, so if anyone is killed then our mission is incomplete.
"There must be a complete ceasefire."
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Mr Elaraby's intervention will be seen as an attempt to shore up the league's waning credibility following a series of gaffes by a mission that has been seen by its critics as both inept and overly-inclined to defend the Syrian government.
Gen Dabi, a senior Sudanese military officer, has been the focus of particularly hostile criticism after claiming that he had seen "nothing frightening" in the city of Homs, where more than 1,000 people are said to have been killed since the uprising against Mr Assad began last March.
The general, who has praised the Syrian government for being "very co-operative", later contradicted one of his own observers who said he had seen snipers shooting at protesters with his own eyes, claiming that his colleague had only been speaking hypothetically.
Such comments have outraged the Syrian opposition, which has demanded Gen Dabi's resignation.
But Mr Elaraby issued a robust defence of his colleague, saying: "There is no doubt that he is a respectable military man with a clean reputation. His record, which I saw, does not include anything that would condemn him." While the secretary-general's criticism of the Assad regime will be welcomed by some in the Syrian opposition, his support for Gen Dabi is likely to prompt incredulity and anger.
A close confidante of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president wanted on war crimes charges by the International Criminal Court, Gen Dabi is accused of presiding over the creation of the Janjaweed, a government-backed militia that carried out a brutal scorched earth campaign in Darfur.
During his time as the head of Sudan's feared military intelligence service, which he led until 1995, he was allegedly responsible for the torture and enforced disappearance of many of Mr Bashir's critics, according to human rights activists.
"The Arab League's decision to appoint as the head of the observer mission a Sudanese general on whose watch severe human rights violations were committed in Sudan risks undermining the League's efforts so far and seriously calls into question the mission's credibility," Amnesty International said in a statement.
Despite the criticism, Mr Elaraby said that the mission had succeeded in considerably reducing the level of violence that has seen more than 5,000 civilians killed since the uprising began.
The assertion that tanks had been withdrawn from the centre of many cities has been confirmed by Syrian activists and is thought to be the reason why the death toll has dropped significantly since last week.
Even so, three civilians were reportedly killed on Monday and activists said that the monitors were not seeing the real picture.
"The observers stayed too long in their hotels before being allowed to go out and their visits are monitored by regime agents," said Jabr al-Shufi, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council.
Mr Elaraby asked for the observers to be given more time, saying it was often difficult for them to identify the source of gunfire that they had witnessed.
Underscoring those difficulties, Syrian rebels launched a series of attacks against army positions on Monday, capturing dozens of soldiers after they seized two military checkpoints. A number of soldiers were killed in the attacks, which were launched despite rebel promises to desist from offensive military action while the observers remained on Syrian soil.
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