Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem yesterday said Arab states were conspiring against Damascus after the Arab League voted to suspend Syria’s membership over the government’s deadly crackdown on an eight month-old uprising.
Al-Moallem said Saturday’s near-unanimous vote at the Arab League’s headquarters in Cairo was an illegitimate decision prompted by US incitement.
The vote was a stinging rebuke to a regime that prides itself as a bastion of Arab nationalism and left Syria increasingly isolated over a crackdown that the UN estimates has killed more than 3,500 people since the middle of March.
“We wanted the role of the Arab League to be a supporting role, but if the Arabs wanted to be conspirators, this is their business,” al-Moallem told a press conference in Damascus that betrayed his country’s deep alarm over the decision.
The vote to suspend Syria put Damascus in direct confrontation with other Arab powers, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, who were pushing for the suspension. The vote constituted a major boost for the Syrian opposition.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad asserts that extremists pushing a foreign agenda to destabilize Syria are behind the country’s unrest, rather than true reform-seekers aiming to open the country’s autocratic political system.
Syria had earlier called for an emergency Arab summit to discuss the country’s spiraling political unrest. However, critics say that is another possible bid by Assad to buy time as he faces snowballing punitive action.
In a thinly veiled warning, the government said it was calling for the meeting “because the fallout from the Syrian crisis could harm regional security” — an apparent effort to play on fears that al-Assad’s ouster would spread chaos throughout the Middle East.
However, in a significant concession, Syria also invited Arab League officials to visit before the membership suspension is scheduled to take effect tomorrow and said they could bring any civilian or military observers they deem appropriate to oversee implementation of an Arab League plan for ending the bloodshed.
The Syrian government is usually loath to accept anything resembling foreign intervention and the invitation is seen as a signal of the government’s concern over the Arab action.
The crisis has raised regional tensions, with Turkey sending a plane to evacuate nonessential personnel after Saturday attacks on several embassies, including Ankara’s, by Syrian government supporters angry over the Arab League decision.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said yesterday his country would take a “decisive attitude” in the face of attacks on its missions in Syria and will continue his country’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition.
Meanwhile, EU governments yesterday agreed to extend a travel ban and asset freeze against 18 more Syrians, whose names will be made public today, associated with the violent crackdown, but signaled that Western military action against the government was unlikely.
EU foreign ministers, meeting in Brussels, also approved plans to stop Syria accessing funds from the European Investment Bank, in a bid to crank up economic pressure against al-Assad.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said there was a good case for further extending EU sanctions, which from today will affect 74 individuals and 19 firms and entities.
“It’s very important in the European Union that we consider additional measures to add to the pressure on the Assad regime to stop the unacceptable violence against the people of Syria,” Hague told reporters as he entered the meeting of EU foreign ministers.
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