Saudi Arabia will withdraw its observers from Syria because the mission has failed to end 10 months of bloodshed and will call on the international community to apply “all possible pleasure” on Damascus to end the violence, its foreign minister said. “My country will withdraw its monitors because the Syrian government did not execute any of the elements of the Arab resolution plan,” Prince Saud al Faisal told Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo.
“We are calling on the international community to bear its responsibility, and that includes our brothers in Islamic states and our friends in Russia, China, Europe and the United States,” Prince Saud said, calling for “all possible pressure” to push Syria to adhere to the Arab peace plan. Saudi Arabia “is withdrawing from the mission because the Syrian government has not respected any of the clauses” in the Arab plan aimed at ending the crisis there, he said according to the text of a statement he made at a ministerial meeting of the 22-member body in Cairo.
Earlier, a source said that an Arab league committee on Syria will ask Arab foreign ministers to extend a monitoring mission in the country by one month. “The committee will recommend an expansion of the monitoring mission for an extra month,” said one source attending the committee meeting in Cairo who asked not to be named. The decision was confirmed by a second source at the meeting.