Arabs Propose Plan to End Syria Unrest, Doha Warns against 'Maneuvers'
The Arab League on Sunday proposed a plan to end the bloodshed in Syria and expects President Bashar al-Assad's response on Monday, Qatar's foreign minister told reporters.
An Arab ministerial team "agreed on a serious proposal to stop the killing and all forms of violence in Syria," Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani told reporters after more than three hours of talks in Doha between a group of Arab foreign ministers and a Syrian team led by their Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem.
"The Syrian delegation has said they would respond tomorrow," he said.
In response to a warning from Assad that any Western intervention in Syria would inflame the region, Jassem said the risk was if Syria failed to take "concrete steps" to stop the violence.
"The entire region is at risk of a massive storm," he said, warning against any "procrastination and maneuvering."
"What is required of Syria ... is concrete steps that could avoid what happened to other countries," Sheikh Hamad said, in apparent reference to the conflict in Libya.
Assad has warned that Western intervention in Syria would cause an "earthquake" across the Middle East, Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper quoted him as telling one of its journalists.
The talks in Doha were bolstered by strong support for the bloc's mediation efforts from China, one of two governments with Russia which earlier this month vetoed U.N. Security Council action against Damascus.
The Arab ministerial delegation led by Qatar aims to try to reach "serious results and an exit to the Syrian crisis," a statement from the team said before the meeting.
In talks in Damascus last week, the Arab ministers warned Assad to stop the bloodshed and start meaningful reforms or face an international intervention, the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas reported on Sunday.
Citing well-informed Arab sources, the paper said the delegation told Assad on Wednesday that failure to resolve the crisis within the Arab fold would mean "internationalizing" the unrest.
"This would mean Syria should expect a foreign intervention and a painful international blockade on the economy and other aspects," the daily said.
China threw its weight behind the Arab mediation effort, with its Middle East envoy Wu Sike saying he had told Assad in Damascus on Thursday that his regime's deadly crackdown on dissent "cannot continue."
Wu said China supported the Arab League's proposal for Assad's regime to hold talks with dissidents, some of whom he met during his visit to the Syrian capital.
"Syria has to show some flexibility in that regard in order to help the Arab League implement its proposal," he said.
Wu said Assad's regime must "respect and respond to the aspirations and rightful demands of the Syrian people," and abandon the crackdown that has killed more than 3,000 people since mid-March, according to U.N. figures.
China, along with Russia, vetoed a Western-drafted resolution at the U.N. Security Council on October 4 that would have threatened Assad's regime with targeted sanctions if it continued its campaign against protesters.
Assad told Russian television on Sunday he expected continued support from Moscow, less than month after President Dmitry Medvedev told the Syrian strongman for the first time to either accept political reform or bow to calls for his resignation.
"First and foremost, we are relying on Russia as a country with which we are bound by strong ties, in the historic perspective," Assad told Moscow's Channel One television.
The Syrian foreign ministry accused the Arab ministerial delegation of stoking dissent, having been influenced by "lies spread by television channels."
It said that in Sunday's talks in Doha, Muallem would inform the delegation of the "true situation in Syria," the official SANA news agency reported.
The Doha talks come as Syrian activists put mounting pressure on the Arab League to suspend Syria's membership in the 22-member bloc.
"Assad's militias have been killing us for eight months. They arrest us and crush us ... And you, Arabs, who love rhetoric, what are you doing," the Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the motors of dissent, said in a post on its Facebook page.
The activists called for protests across Syria on Sunday calling for the League to "freeze the membership" of Syria.
At least two people were killed in fresh violence on Sunday, both by snipers in the flashpoint central province of Homs, a human rights group said.
Gunfire from a security checkpoint in the Deir Balaa neighborhood of Homs city wounded another 10 people, some of them critically, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Agence France Presse.
Source: Agence France Presse
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