‘Arab deal has failed now UN must back no-fly zone for Syria’

THE Arab League must acknowledge the failure of its monitoring mission inside Syria, and focus its efforts on achieving United Nations’ backing for a no-fly zone, the head of the main Syrian opposition group has told The Scotsman.

Concerned the League was providing cover for president Bashar al-Assad’s regime to suppress protests, Dr Burhan Galioun called on it to “replace the monitoring mission with [one] able of execute their objective”.

If the monitors did not soon expose “the regime’s atrocities against the Syrian people” their mission should be subsumed by the UN, said Dr Galioun, a professor at the Sorbonne in Paris and chair of the Syrian opposition Transitional National Council.

The League meeting in Cairo on Saturday is due to review the interim findings of the observer mission, criticised by opposition activists for failing to stem the bloodshed in Syria.

In a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon yesterday, Qatar’s premier Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani – who heads the task force on Syria – called for help and advice from the UN on how to run the mission and admitted “some mistakes” in its composition.

About 100 League observers are in Syria to assess whether Mr Assad’s regime is abiding by a peace plan that requires it to remove security forces and heavy weapons from cities, start talks with opposition leaders and free political prisoners.

But Dr Galioun said: “Our anticipation is that it [Arab League mission] is going to fail. But we still want the Arab League to make the calls and take the initiative, so are pushing them to call for a UN Security Council resolution.”

The resolution should mandate a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, he added. “We are officially now requesting from the UN to help us establish safe corridors to protect civilians who have faced the extreme killing machine of the regime for more than ten months now.”

Such a safe zone, he said, could include Idlib, a city in Syria’s mountainous north-west, close to the Turkish border and a stronghold of the Free Syrian Army.

The move would require foreign intervention, involving initial airstrikes on Syrian military installations.

But Dr Galioun was adamant this was not “another Libya”, in which what began as peaceful protests turned into an eightmonth Nato bombing campaign and civil war. “We believe a safe zone will encourage armies of the regime to defect and take the revolution’s side. This would topple the balance in the favour of the revolution,” he said.