CAIRO (dpa) – At least 21 people were killed in Syria on Sunday in a crackdown by government troops, opposition activists said, as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned President Bashar al-Assad of a “dead end.” “Stop the violence against your people as the path of oppression will lead to a dead end,” Ban told a conference in Beirut on democracy in the Arab world. The warning came as government forces continued to shell the town of Zabadani, near the border with Lebanon, for a second consecutive day. Most of the 21 deaths were in northern Idlib province and central Homs province, according to a group of activists who set up the Local Coordination Committees of Syria online groups. Ban's warning came as Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said that a proposal to send Arab peacekeepers to Syria will be on the agenda of an upcoming Arab ministerial meeting, the Kuwaiti news agency reported. Al-Arabi was in Bahrain as part of an Arab tour, to discuss developments in Syria and bolstering Arab presence there. “The Arab League council will meet very soon to study the issue of replacing the monitoring mission with an Arab military force to separate between the army and civilians,” former Arab League chief Amr Moussa told The Daily Star on the sidelines of the Beirut conference. “We should not rule out any proposal from the head of an Arab state. Let the Arab League study the initiative quickly because the situation in Syria cannot endure a slow pace,” Moussa said. The ruler of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, told US broadcaster CBS that Arab troops should be sent to Syria to stop the bloodshed. Qatar's prime minister heads the Arab League committee on Syria, which sent an observer mission to check Syria's compliance with an Arab peace plan. According to United Nations estimates, 5,000 people have died in the crackdown on protesters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a team of monitors visited the north-western city of Banias, but only went to areas dominated by pro-al-Assad residents. “If the regime continues to mislead the observers, we at the Syrian Observatory will call for pulling them out as they give the government a legal cover for the suppression of the Syrian people,” the London-based group added. Meanwhile, leading deserters from the Syrian army are to create a supreme military council to plan operations against al-Assad's regime, broadcaster Al Arabiya reported Sunday. The council is to be announced soon in Turkey and will be led by Brigadier Mustafa al-Sheikh, who recently defected, the report said. The opposition says about 40,000 Sunni Muslim soldiers have defected from the army, which is run by officers from al-Assad's minority Alawite sect. Meanwhile, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that al-Assad had ordered a general amnesty for “criminal offenses” committed since the pro-democracy protests started in March. No further details were provided in the report. Under an Arab League peace plan endorsed by Damascus, the Syrian government is committed to releasing all political prisoners held in connection with the uprising, withdrawing troops from cities and holding a dialogue with the opposition. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/Aer3H Tags: Assad, Ban Ki-moon, featured, Violence Section: Human Rights, Latest News, Syria
