A powerful joint Arab front for military intervention in Syria was being formed on Sunday night, as the Assad regime desperately fought to stave off calls for action.
Syrian officials registers the names of prisoners who were freed from the Adra Prison on the north-east outskirts of Damascus Photo: EPA
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
9:09PM GMT 15 Jan 2012
President Bashar al-Assad announced a general amnesty for crimes committed since the start of the uprising against his rule last March, saying offenders had until the end of January to turn themselves in.
But two previous amnesty offers had little effect, only spurring on the revolutionaries, who have since seized control of parts of major cities.
Mr Assad's attempts to mix such offers with a tough line on continued resistance, which he pledged in a keynote speech last week, suggest he is floundering in the face of a continued build-up of outside forces against him.
Brigadier-General Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh, the most senior of his officers to defect, was in talks on Sunday with the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council prior to announcing a new Syrian Military Council to coordinate armed resistance.
"He is working now to build this council and will make an announcement tonight or tomorrow," his spokesman told The Daily Telegraph last night.
Related Articles
_ UN chief: 'Syria regime must stop killing its own people' - 15 Jan 2012
_ Syria: President Bashar al-Assad decrees amnesty - 15 Jan 2012
_ Arab League observers to Syria tell of regime's death threats - 14 Jan 2012
_ William Hague's greatest worries are Iran and Middle East - 14 Jan 2012
_ Syria crisis: press trip ends in death - 14 Jan 2012
The military council could be used as a front for intervention either by the Arab League as a whole, which will receive a report from its observers' mission on Thursday, or by individual members.
Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, which led the Arab involvement in the Libyan conflict, said he now favoured sending troops "to stop the killing", the first Arab leader to say so publicly.
He won support from the former head of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, who said: "The Arab League should begin to study this possibility and begin consultations on this issue."
Mr Moussa's words have added weight as he is currently a candidate, and favourite, in Egypt's presidential elections due later this year.
Such calls for military intervention in an internal Arab conflict would have been unthinkable until a year ago. But by sending a monitoring mission to Syria, and seeing it publicly mocked by Mr Assad in his speech last week, the Arab League has been forced into a position where it has to take action or lose whatever credibility it has on the world stage.
The United Nations estimated that 400 people were killed in the first ten days of the monitoring mission, while at least one of the monitors walked out in protest at what he said was "people being killed, beaten up, and arrested by police, soldiers and militiamen" in front of them.
The Emir's proposal will meet fierce resistance, but his prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, heads the committee overseeing the mission's work and will be backing a forceful position when it meets on Saturday prior to a full foreign ministers' meeting the next day.
Any military intervention will most likely take the form of a buffer zone or humanitarian corridor linking rebel-held areas in cities like Homs which have come under government attack. But that would provide a safe haven for the Free Syrian Army, who could now have a figurehead in Gen Sheikh, a ground forces commander in northern Syria before he defected last month.
He estimates that 20,000 troops have changed sides, as against an army of some 280,000, indicating that, as in Libya, outside help would be needed to balance the forces. On the other hand, opposition to Mr Assad is diffused across the country, suggesting a long-drawn out civil war is in any case the most likely outcome.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, downplayed the prospect of western involvement. "There is no serious prospect certainly at the moment of the United Nations Security Council agreeing any resolution, let alone agreeing a resolution comparable to anything that happened in Libya," he said in an interview with Sky News.
Mr Assad's offer of amnesty covers "crimes related to the laws on peaceful demonstration, carrying or possessing unlicensed weapons and ammunition and draft evasion", according to the state news agency.
It may have been drafted to comply with the now discarded Arab League peace deal under which the regime agreed to release prisoners. However, there is no sign that most of the thousands of detainees said by human rights groups to have been seized since March will be released any time soon.
Chân thành cám ơn Quý Anh Chị ghé thăm "conbenho Nguyễn Hoài Trang Blog"
Xin được lắng nghe ý kiến chia sẻ của Quý Anh Chị trực tiếp tại Diễn Đàn Paltalk: 1Latdo Tapdoan Vietgian CSVN Phanquoc Bannuoc .
Kính chúc Sức Khỏe Quý Anh Chị .
conbenho
Tiểu Muội quantu
Nguyễn Hoài Trang
16012012
___________
CSVN là TỘI ÁC
Bao che, dung dưỡng TỘI ÁC là đồng lõa với TỘI ÁC
No comments:
Post a Comment