Posted on January 31, 2012 - by Venik

Syria: UN to hear Arab League proposals – live updates

• US, UK and France press for security council vote on Syria
• Russia proposes talks between regime and opposition
• Syrian army retakes Damascus suburbs

9.14am: Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre, provides a preview of the security council meetings today:

Highly unusual so many (western) FMs will attend today’s UNSC session on #Syria while draft resolution is still being negotiated. Contd.

— Salman Shaikh (@Salman_Shaikh1) January 31, 2012

Finally,11mo after #Syria uprsinig started, key regional & western countries telling are telling the Syrian ppl – you are not alone. Contd

— Salman Shaikh (@Salman_Shaikh1) January 31, 2012

#Russia & #China face stark choices in #UNSC. We shld also look our for the statements of the BRICS in the council. #Syria

— Salman Shaikh (@Salman_Shaikh1) January 31, 2012

8.55am: “Human rights drones” should be used to monitor the violence in Syria according to Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis, co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network.

Writing in the New York Times they say:

Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars — no longer many millions — a surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria.

8.29am: Welcome to Middle East Live.

Activists in Syrian claim that up to 100 people were killed in army assaults on opposition strongholds on Monday as foreign ministers are due at the UN to discuss the crisis.

Here’s a round up of the latest developments:

Syria

• Syrian forces remain heavily deployed in parts of Damascus that were controlled by rebel forces over the weekend after launching a counterattack to reinforce the increasingly vulnerable capital. The opposition Free Syrian Army claim to have made a tactical withdrawal from the areas, mainly on Damascus’s northen outskirts, and have vowed to mount more guerrilla-style operations as their campaign against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime enters a new phase.

Blogger Maysaloon says any expectations that this was the start of a liberation for the Syrian capital were premature.

Apart from the Zabadani there just aren’t any areas where the Free Syrian Army can hold its ground against Assad.

• Hillary Clinton, William Hague and Alain Juppé are due at the UN security council today to support an Arab League plan to end the violence in Syria and to try to overcome Russian-led opposition to a UN-backed demand for political change in Damascus. Diplomats said a vote was likely by Thursday, after the council considers a report by the Arab League secretary general, Nabil Elaraby, and the Qatari prime minister, Hamad Bin Jassim, followed by an ambassadors’ meeting on Wednesday aimed at finding a compromise formula acceptable to Russia, Assad’s principal supporter on the world stage.

• The Syrian government has accepted Russia’s proposal to meet
the opposition in Moscow, but the opposition is yet to give its consent, RIA Novosti reports. It quotes a Russian foreign ministry statement as saying: “Our invitation has already received a positive response from the Syrian authorities. We expect that the opposition will give its answer in the next few days,” the ministry said in a statement. The opposition National Syrian Council told Reuters it had not been asked and would not take part.

• Russian wavering on Syria suggests Bashar al-Assad’s days, as Syria’s president, are numbered, according to Middle East analyst Juan Cole.

So far, Russia and China have run interference for Damascus at the UN. Russia may be especially reluctant to back down on Syria given the upcoming presidential election, in Which Vladimir Putin will want to look strong against the West. The Libya intervention was extremely unpopular in Russia, where it was seen as neo-imperialism, and forestalling American and European meddling in Syria might make Putin look strong at home.

On the other hand, the more brutal the regime becomes, and the more unpopular, the more Russia risks taking a big fall in the whole Arab world if the Baath collapses. Sami Moubayed argues that Russia is now backing an Arab League/ Saudi plan calling for Bashar al-Assad to delegate most of his power to his second in command, Farouk al-Sharaa, who should form a national unity cabinet with members of the opposition Syrian National Council in preparation for moving to new elections.

(This plan resembles the Gulf Cooperation Council plan for Yemen, which, while so far implemented, has not worked very well). But that Russia is planning to meet Syrian oppositionists and seems to be content with al-Assad being pushed at least somewhat aside indicates that the president’s days may be numbered.

• But the US is expecting Russia to block any resolution on Syria, according to Foreign Policy’s diplomatic blog the Cable:

There’s no longer any expectation inside the administration that Moscow will support international action aimed at removing Assad from power, even by non-military means. But the U.N. confrontation is meant to isolate Russia diplomatically and make it clear that the Arab League and its Western friends have exhausted all diplomatic options before moving to directly aid the internal opposition, if that decision is ultimately made.

Libya

• Two prominent Libyan dissidents are suing a former senior MI6 officer in a move which could expose the role of ministers in the men’s abduction to Tripoli, where they say they were tortured by Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police. Lawyers for Abdul Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi have served a claim on Sir Mark Allen, the MI6 officer at the centre of the affair. They are suing Allen, then the most senior officer in MI6 responsible for counter-terrorism, alleging “complicity in torture” and “misfeasance in public office”.

Egypt

• Three Americans barred by Egyptian authorities from leaving the country have sought refuge at the United States embassy in Cairo. Egyptian authorities are preventing at least six Americans and four Europeans from leaving the country, citing an investigation opened last month when heavily armed security forces raided the offices of 10 pro-democracy organisations.

Bahrain

• Anti-government protesters clashed with riot police officers on Monday after the funeral of a teenager who died last week in police custody, the New York Times reports. Protesters in Sitra were doused in teargas as officers faced off against youths who blocked roads, set tires alight and threw petrol bombs.

Original article