International pressure on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad intensified on Sunday, with Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, telling the embattled leader that the “old order” of authoriarian rule in the Middle East was coming to an end.
“Stop the violence. Stop killing your people. The path of repression is a dead end,” Mr Ban said in a speech to a conference on political reform in neighbouring Lebanon.
The Syrian state news agency meanwhile announced announced that Mr Assad had approved an amnesty for all “crimes committed in the context of the events that occurred” since the uprising began last March. No further information was made available on the details of the amnesty or its impact on the thousands of Syrians jailed during the protests.
The highly critical speech from the UN chief came a day after the ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, was quoted as saying soldiers from Arab countries should be sent to Syria to intervene in the crisis and “stop the killing”.
The comments – to US broadcaster CBS – were the first public call for military action, as political efforts to halt the violence unravel and the mounting death toll makes a mockery of a regional peace plan.
The remarks, in an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday, raise the stakes in a conflict in which even Mr Assad’s enemies abroad have shied away from suggesting military intervention. Western and Arab powers fear the potentially destructive regional impact of war in a country allied with Tehran and which lies at the geographical and political heart of the Middle East.
Al-Jazeera, the state-owned Qatari TV station, said CBS did its interview with the Emir in mid-November, although this couldn’t be immediately confirmed and the story on the broadcaster’s website gave no date for the recording.
The intervention plan floated by Qatar – a small but very rich oil state which has taken its historically muscular foreign policy to another level during the Arab awakening – is a sign of how Middle Eastern and western officials are searching for new strategies on Syria amid a faltering three-week old monitoring mission sent there by the inter-governmental Arab League.
Killings in Syria – where 5,000 are estimated to have died during the ten-month uprising – have continued despite the arrival of the mission to investigate whether the regime is implementing a peace plan under which it is supposed to pull the army off the streets, release political prisoners and start talks with the opposition.
Six Syrian civilians were killed on Saturday, including a 13-year-old boy and a man shot dead in the rebellious central city of Homs, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed, according to the Associated Press.
Nabil Elaraby, Arab League secretary-general, warned on Friday that Syria could slip into civil war. The conflict is becoming increasingly militarised, with army defectors now involved alongside the peaceful protesters whose first demonstrations almost a year ago triggered a brutal crackdown by regime forces.
Although there appears to be no appetite for western military intervention along the lines of the Nato mission in Libya that played a big part in ousting Muammer Gaddafi, there have been reports of an informal contact group forming to co-ordinate policy on Syria.
The group is said to include Gulf states, Turkey, the US and leading European powers, although Nato and several of its members hit back this week at Russian claims that they were “working under the Libyan scenario” with some Arab allies on a plan to topple Mr Assad militarily.
The allegations by Nikolai Patrushev, Russia’s security council chief, echo the view of Russia’s KGB-trained security elite, but also indicate that Russia is trying to pre-empt calls through the UN or elsewhere for intervention against its strongest Arab ally.
Moscow’s anxiety might have been heightened by recent meetings between Hillary Clinton, US secretary of state, and her Saudi and Qatari counterparts.
A Russian-operated ship carrying ammunition docked in a Syrian-government controlled port last week, alarming opponents of the Assad regime.
Syria’s opposition has condemned the Arab League monitoring mission as an ineffectual operation that is allowing the president more time to crush the uprising. Observers have also been plagued by problems on the ground, including minor injuries to 11 monitors from a pro-Assad mob and a walkout by an Algerian team member who branded the operation a “farce”.
Analysts say the Syrian regime – which claims the uprising against it is an act of terrorism driven by foreign powers – has shown few signs of honouring pledges under the Arab League peace plan.
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