Arab League parliament urges Syria (and Yemen) suspension

[pampango]

Source: Aljazeera

An Arab parliamentary body has called for the suspension of the membership of Syria and Yemen in the Arab League in a bid to put pressure on the two countries to heed popular demands for reforms. The call was put out on Tuesday following a committee meeting of the Arab Parliament, a body to which members of the Arab League send representatives.

The head of the committee, which met at the Arab League's headquarters in Cairo, said that "mass slaughter" was taking place in Syria and Yemen and called on the league to deal with the countries in a similar way to how it dealt with Libya. After a crackdown by the government of Muammar Gaddafi on pro-democracy protesters, the Arab League suspended Libya's Arab League membership in February.

"We call on the Arab states to freeze the membership of Damascus in the Arab League and urge the Arab leaders to take more active stands in that regard if the Syrian leadership did not ... stop violence and withdraw its security forces and army ... and form a national unity government from all political powers," said Tawfik Abdallah of the Arab Parliamentarians Political Affairs and National Security Committee.

"We call on the Yemeni leadership to respond to the Yemeni people and accept the Gulf states initiative ... or we call on the Arab League to suspend the membership of Yemen in the Arab League and all its organisations."

The parliamentary committee was careful to specify that it was not calling for foreign intervention, such as the NATO imposed no-fly zone on Libya that was initially supported by the Arab League.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/09/201192017594330402.html

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Assad is losing support in the Arab world (including in Turkey-a traditional ally and now the Arab League). Russia (with its naval base in Syria and arms sales to Syria) and, to a lesser extent, China are about the only friends Assad has left.

[mazzarro]

1. The Arab League will be more credible when they start being consistent

in the way they deal with all the Arab countries including big-daddy Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states like Bahrain, etc. To pick and chose which country to condemn and which to let slide will not hack it any more - when it comes to suppressing peoples' aspirations.. Further more, to allow the West dictate what obtains in terms of the Palestine issue - is another burden the league must resolve as well.