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29 March 2024

Gulf states oppose summit on Syria

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube, shows two dead men, one with his hands tied behind his back, lying on the street in Deir Balbah neighborhood in the city of Homs. (AFP)

Published
By AFP

The six Gulf Cooperation Council states said on Tuesday that they oppose a Syrian request for an emergency Arab summit on the bloody crisis in the country.

The GCC "sees that the request to hold an Arab summit at this time is useless," knowing that Arab foreign ministers will meet in Rabat on Wednesday, GCC Secretary General Abdullatif Al Zayani said.

The Arab League on Saturday voted to suspend Syria from all of the pan-Arab bloc's activities over its failure to implement a deal to end the violence which has left around 3,500 dead since March, according to UN figures.

League chief Nabil Al Arabi said on Monday that he had received a letter from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem calling for an urgent Arab summit to discuss the crisis.

Arab leaders have been informed of the request, the secretary general said, adding that the emergency summit can only be held if two-thirds of the bloc's members endorse the call.

Meanwhile, more than 70 people died in one of the bloodiest days of Syria's eight-month uprising, activists said Tuesday, as President Bashar al-Assad's loyalists reacted angrily to growing isolation.

Around 100 of his supporters stormed the Jordanian embassy in Damascus overnight -- the latest regional mission to be targeted since the Arab League voted on Saturday to impose sanctions -- after Jordan's King Abdullah II became the first Arab leader to publicly call for Assad to quit.

Buoyed by the fast-growing diplomatic pressure, Syria's opposition stepped up its contacts with the regime's remaining bulwarks, holding talks in Moscow, which last month joined Beijing in vetoing a UN Security Council resolution that would have threatened "targeted measures."

Neighbouring Turkey, a former close Syrian ally that has been one of the most outspoken champions of reform, prepared to hold talks in Morocco with Arab leaders Wednesday that are expected to be dominated by the bloodshed.

In a sign of the potential for civil war in one of the Middle East's most pivotal countries, five regular army troops were killed on Tuesday in clashes with mutinous soldiers who refused orders to shoot on civilians, a human rights group said, after 34 were killed the previous day.

The fighting erupted in the town of Hara in Daraa province, where the unprecedented protests against Assad's 11-year reign erupted in mid-March, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Idlib province in the northwest, close to the Turkish border, "clashes between the regular army and armed men, probably deserters, caused at least 14 casualties -- dead and wounded," the Britain-based watchdog added.

A child was killed in the province's Kfar Uma district where more than 20 explosions were heard during the clashes between the army and presumed deserters, it said.

In the flashpoint central city of Homs, scene of a deadly offensive by loyalist troops since the signing of an abortive Arab League peace deal earlier this month, 19 unidentified bodies were delivered to the main public hospital.

The Observatory said it feared the dead were among the victims of a spate of kidnappings by pro-government militia in the city -- Syria's third largest.

Desertions within Assad's security forces -- which have a professional hard core but also much larger conscripted ranks -- triggered much of Monday's death toll of more than 70.

A total of 34 soldiers and 12 suspected army deserters were killed in clashes, as well as 27 civilians shot dead by security forces in the regime's intensifying crackdown, the Observatory said.

Most of the victims were killed in Daraa province, the uprising's birthplace close to the border with Jordan, which has become increasingly outspoken about the bloodshed in its northern neighbour.

King Abdullah II on Monday became the first Arab leader to openly call for Assad to step down, two days after the Arab League took the rare move of suspending Syrian membership of the 22-nation bloc and imposing sanctions.

"I believe, if I were in his shoes, I would step down," the king said in a BBC interview. "I would step down and make sure whoever comes behind me has the ability to change the status quo that we're seeing."

Angry Assad loyalists stormed the Jordanian embassy in Damascus on Monday evening in response, mirroring similar attacks on the Qatari, Saudi and Turkish embassies, the ambassador told the Jordanian press.

"Nearly 120 people protested in front of the Jordanian embassy in Damascus on Monday evening and two of them managed to break into the outside courtyard of the embassy and tear down the Jordanian flag," ambassador Omar al-Amad told the Al-Dustur and Al-Ghad newspapers.

Jordan and other Arab governments are due to hold talks in Morocco on Wednesday with Turkey whose Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Tuesday that Syria stood on the edge of a precipice.

"The Syrian government is on a very dangerous and narrow path, like the edge of a knife," Erdogan told lawmakers from his ruling party. "It is our common desire for him to turn back from this path, which has a cliff at the end."

Ankara's tough stance has won it the growing adulation of anti-government protesters in Syria.

Hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of the main northern city of Aleppo late on Monday, waving Turkish flags and chanting: "Thank you, Turkish government," Turkey's NTV television channel reported.

Ahead of the Rabat meeting, Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi was to hold talks with the Syrian opposition later on Tuesday in a bid to broker a unified vision of a post-Assad era.

The Syrian opposition also held talks with Russia -- one of the regime's rapidly dwindling band of allies -- in a bid to intensify the pressure on Assad to step aside.

"We told our Russian colleagues that to make the start of the talks possible we believe it is necessary for Russia and the international community to send an important signal and demand Bashar al-Assad's resignation," Burhan Ghalioun, the Paris-based leader of the opposition Syrian National Council told the Interfax news agency after the talks.