BEIRUT: Saudi Arabia’s Gulf allies joined it on Tuesday in pulling out of an Arab League monitoring team to Syria, further damaging the credibility of a mission whose presence has not halted more than 10 months of violence.
Syria risks becoming an Arab and international pariah for its harsh response to an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in which thousands of people have been killed.
The Arab League demanded on Sunday that Assad step down in favour of a unity government to end the bloodshed, but said Arab observers should stay in Syria for another month.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said at the time his country was quitting the mission because Syria had not implemented an earlier Arab peace plan. He urged Muslim states as well as Russia, China, Europe and the United States, to exert ‘all possible pressure’ on Syria to ensure its compliance.
‘The GCC states have decided to respond to the decision of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to withdraw its monitors from the Arab League delegation to Syria,’ the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement.
It said the GCC was ‘certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue, and that the Syrian regime would not abide by the Arab League’s resolutions’.
The Arab League demand for a change of government in Syria puts more pressure on the UN Security Council to overcome its divisions and take a stand on the bloodletting there.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mualem was to hold a news conference at 1 pm (1630 IST) at which he was expected to reject the Arab plan and say whether Damascus will allow Arab monitors to stay in the country for another month.
In an initial response, an official Syrian source told state news agency SANA on Monday the Arab initiative was a ‘conspiracy against Syria’ and ‘flagrant interference’ in its affairs. (PTI)