Saudi Arabia's Gulf allies joined Riyadh on Tuesday, January 24, in pulling out of an Arab League monitoring team to Syria, risking the collapse of a mission whose presence has not halted more than 10 months of violence, Reuters reported.
Envoys to the Cairo-based League will meet later in the day to discuss whether to call off the whole mission, Sudan's ambassador to the 22-member body said.
"The meeting of representatives today will discuss the fate of the monitoring mission, whether it continues or withdraws," the envoy, Kamal Hassan Ali said.
The Arab League demanded on Sunday that Assad step down in favor of a unity government to end the bloodshed, but said Arab observers should stay in Syria for another month. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said at the time his country was quitting the mission because Syria had not implemented any part of an Arab peace plan agreed in November.
"The GCC states have decided to respond to the decision of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to withdraw its monitors from the Arab League delegation to Syria," the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement. It said the GCC was "certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue, and that the Syrian regime would not abide by the Arab League's resolutions."
A Syrian opposition group condemned the mission's leader, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, for a report in which he highlighted violence by Assad's adversaries as well as by his security forces.
The Syria-based Local Coordination Committees criticized Dabi for equating "the butcher and the victim," saying he had "blurred the monumental hardship that millions of Syrians experience every day while they rise to reach freedom, dignity, democracy and a wise system of governance." It said the security forces had killed 36 people, including three children, on Monday. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the civilian death toll at 26.
