Dissidents slam mission for not being ‘impartial’

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Khoja says the Syrian people no longer see solution in League mission. DAILY NEWS photo, Hasan ALTINIŞIK

The Syrian opposition criticized the Arab League’s observer mission for not being “impartial” and said the Syrian people do not expect any solution from the Arab League’s initiative anymore.

The commander of Syrian armed rebels said yesterday he was dissatisfied with the Arab monitors’ progress in halting a military crackdown on protests and threatened to wait only a few days before escalating operations with a new style of attack, Reuters reported.

The Arab League’s observer mission in Syria has drawn reaction from the Syrian opposition forces. A high-ranking member of the Syrian National Council (SNC) Khaled Khoja said the Syrian people no longer see any solution coming out of the Arab League mission.

“If we feel [the monitors] are still not serious in a few days, or at most within a week, we will take a decision which will surprise the regime and the whole world,” Free Syrian Army (FSA) head Colonel Riad al-Asaad told Reuters.

The Arab League observers gave conflicting accounts of an incident said to have involved snipers in the city of Deraa. Footage posted online showed one official saying he had seen government snipers on rooftops and calling for them to be withdrawn. However, the chief of the Arab League mission Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi later denied the official had seen the snipers.

SNC has also criticized al-Dabi for not being impartial on the offensive of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Al-Dabi had a bad reputation in Sudan because of the belief he was deeply involved in the crimes committed in the Darfur region where he worked for an extended time as representative of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir to quell the rebellion in 1999, which spread throughout Darfur in 2003.