BEIRUT/ AMMAN: A key Syrian opposition group called Tuesday for international monitors ahead of a visit to Damascus by senior Arab officials probing ways to start dialogue and calm the 7-month-old uprising against the regime.

The broad-based opposition Syrian National Council said there can be no talks with President Bashar Assad’s government, particularly while it continues its military crackdown on protesters, which the U.N. says has already killed 3,000 people.
The group’s statement also called for a nationwide strike Wednesday.

Syria is becoming increasingly isolated with the U.S. pulling out its ambassador to Damascus Monday, arguing that his support for anti-Assad activists put him in grave danger. Syria responded quickly Monday, ordering home its envoy from Washington.

China, which blocked a U.N. resolution earlier this month that threatened sanctions on Syria, said Tuesday it was also sending an envoy to Syria. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said Beijing wants all parties in Syria to resolve the crisis peacefully.

“We believe the Syrian government should deliver on its reform pledges, respond to the people’s appeals and that all parties should, in a constructive manner, actively participate in the political process,” Jiang told reporters.
The Arab ministerial committee, led by the prime minister of Qatar, is expected to arrive Wednesday to discuss the possibility of a national dialogue between the opposition and Assad’s regime.

The visit follows a meeting in Cairo last week by the 22-nation Arab League, which gave Syria until the end of the month to enact a cease-fire and start a dialogue with the opposition. Should Syria fail to do so, the League pledged to meet again to consider new options.

Damascus appears to have grudgingly agreed to the Arab mission even though it refuses to have outsiders interfere in what it considers its internal affairs. Qatar, in particular, has been critical of the Assad regime’s crackdown on demonstrators.

The Syrian National Council’s statement said it was worried the League’s initiative “did not distinguish between the victim and the executioner.”

It also called for “international protection for civilians” and for Arab and international observers to be allowed into Syria immediately to oversee the situation. It didn’t elaborate but seemed to be referring more to observers with a mandate to oversee human rights abuses than an international protection force.
The SNC, like other opposition groups in Syria, is opposed to NATO-style military intervention that helped oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

A separate SNC statement urged Syrians to comply with a nationwide call for a general strike Wednesday, saying it would usher in a new phase of the uprising and elevate it to a civil disobedience campaign to bring down the regime.

Many villages in the southern province of Deraa, where the uprising against the Assad regime began in mid-March, have been on strike for five days to protest the killings of several anti-government demonstrators last week.
A local activist told the Associated Press Tuesday that security forces were trying to intimidate people into opening their shops, even calling from minarets on people to show to work but that most people were staying at home in defiance. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Elsewhere in the country Tuesday, forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad fought army deserters at a roadblock on the edge of the northwestern town of Maarat al-Numaan, residents and activists said.

Maarat al-Numaan, is sheltering soldiers who defected during a military assault in the central province of Homs – one of the largest offensives against a seven-month-old popular uprising and a nascent armed insurgency.
“A firefight broke out in the early afternoon at the large barrier which is manned by soldiers and military intelligence personnel. Tanks are also deployed there,” a local resident, who gave his name as Raed, said.

He said the roadblock was attacked in response to a military operation overnight against defectors sheltering around a chicken factory at the outskirts of Maarat al-Numaan.
The town is located in an agricultural area on Syria’s main northern highway, 100 km north of Homs and 70 km from Syria’s main commercial hub of Aleppo.

Maarat al-Numaan, a key town in the Roman and Islamic era, was a hotbed of resistance to Assad’s father, the late President Hafez Assad, in the 1980s when his forces crushed Islamist and leftist challenges to his rule, killing tens of thousands.