Syria said yesterday it will accept observers as part of an Arab League plan to end deadly unrest if its conditions are met, in a last-ditch bid to stave off crippling sanctions.
Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said he received a letter from Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem outlining his government’s about-face but which contained “new demands.”
“We’ve contacted Arab foreign ministers and they have been apprised of the Syrian letter,” Mr Arabi said, adding consultations were underway. Mr Muallem had sent the letter late on Sunday as a League deadline was set to expire.
Damascus has refused to sign the proposal, arguing the text undermines its sovereignty, prompting the Arab League on November 27 to impose sweeping sanctions on Syria.
The Arab bloc warned on Saturday of new punitive measures against Syria unless it allows monitors access to the country where the UN estimates a crackdown on anti-regime protests has killed more than 4,000 people since March. The international community wants monitors in Syria to keep a check on President Bashar al-Assad’s forces who have been accused by the UN of rights abuses.
Meanwhile thirty-four Syrians abducted by pro-regime “shabiha” militiamen yesterday were found dead in the flashpoint central city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The Britain-based watchdog said an activist on the ground reported seeing “the bodies of 34 civilians, in a square in the pro-regime neighbourhood of Al-Zahra, who had been abducted by the shabiha on Monday.”
The civilians, it said, had been seized from several “anti-regime neighbourhoods” in Homs, which has been targeted by a brutal crackdown on almost nine months of anti-regime dissent.
The Observatory also reported the so-called “shabiha” abducted yesterday a bus driver and his 13 passengers in Homs province.
Forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have laid siege to Homs for the past two months.
Seven people were reported killed in the city and province yesterday by gunfire from the security forces, the Observatory said, after a bloody weekend that saw 63 people dead, at least half of them in Homs.