“We do not think that there is any party which is willing to internationalise this matter. At least we Arabs don’t,” Shaikh Abdullah said when asked if the Arab League would take the Syrian crisis to the Security Council if their initiative fails. He was speaking to the media after meeting Lavrov here.
Qatar’s Prime Minister Shaikh Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani, who also holds the foreign affairs portfolio, on Monday repeated a previous warning that Syrian President Bashar Al Assad risked forcing an international intervention if he allows the violence to continue. The Arab League awaits a response from Damascus to a proposal to end violence put forward to a Syrian delegation in Qatar on Sunday.
The Russian Foreign Minister said his country would oppose a Libya-style military intervention against the Syrian regime. “We have many questions regarding the treatment of international law after the UN Security Council adopted the Libyan resolution,” allowing military intervention to protect civilian lives, and “after the Libyan drama”, he said in Abu Dhabi.
A month after the launch of an uprising against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime, the UN Security Council passed a resolution approving “all necessary measures” to impose a no-fly zone and protect civilians in Libya. “If it depends on us, I don’t think we will allow anything of that sort to be repeated” in Syria, Lavrov said after a Gulf-Russian ministerial meeting, when asked if such measures could be taken against Syria. Asked if Moscow will maintain its support for the regime of Assad, the Russian foreign minister said: “We are not protecting any regime.”
Assad, who is under mounting Arab and international pressure to stop the bloody crackdown against pro-democracy protesters, told Russian television on Sunday he expected continued support from Moscow. Assad’s appeal came less than a month after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told the Syrian leader for the first time to either accept political reform or bow to calls for his resignation.
At an emergency session in Cairo on October 16, the 22-member Arab League called for “national dialogue” between the government and opposition by the end of the month to help stop the violence and avoid “foreign intervention” in Syria. China, along with Russia, vetoed a Western-drafted resolution at the UN Security Council on October 4 that would have threatened Assad’s regime with targeted sanctions if it continued its campaign against
protesters.
Last week, activists urged the international community to impose a Libya-style no-fly zone on Syria. Lavrov on Tuesday urged the Syrian opposition “not to reject invitations for dialogue” and said they “must not associate with destructive, radical, extremist elements (and) armed groups who receive arms from abroad.”
