BEIRUT: The Arab League is set to adopt sanctions against Syria Thursday, Arab diplomats told The Daily Star, as France became the first country to openly back international intervention to end the crisis, in the form of humanitarian corridors.

Arab foreign ministers are to meet Thursday in Cairo to discuss the Syria crisis, after rebuffing Syrian requests for an amendment to the League’s Nov. 2 initiative that would see a 500-strong observer mission to monitor the full implementation of the plan to remove troops from cities and release political prisoners. The Arab League suspended Syria’s participation in meetings after it failed to implement the agreement.

Arab diplomats told The Daily Star Wednesday that Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told the organization Syria is willing to sign on to the plan on the condition the League add the requested amendments, and the League’s rebuttal. But, the source said a League committee would also refuse that request Thursday and that foreign ministers would press ahead with economic sanctions. The source said the League would also move to freeze senior government members’ assets held in Arab countries.

After a meeting with SNC Chairman Burhan Ghalioun Wednesday French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe described Syria’s exiled opposition National Council as “the legitimate partner with which we want to work,” the biggest international endorsement yet for the nascent opposition body.
He ruled out any military intervention to create a “buffer zone” in northern Syria but suggested that a “securitized zone” may be feasible to protect civilians and ferry in humanitarian aid.

“If it’s possible to have a humanitarian dimension for a securitized zone to protect civilians, that’s a question which has to be studied by the European Union on the one side and the Arab League on the other,” he told a news conference. Further details of the proposal were not immediately available. Until now, Western countries have imposed economic sanctions on Syria but have shown no appetite for intervention on the ground in the country. France, the first Western country to recognize Libya’s opposition, has been championing the cause of pro-democracy protesters in Syria, leading calls for a U.N. Security Council resolution to condemn the government’s crackdown.

Juppe said he had asked to put on the agenda of the next European Union meeting the possibility of creating humanitarian initiatives.
European foreign ministers meet next week, with leaders convening the following week.

International concern has grown over Assad’s violent crackdown on the eight-month uprising, with Turkish President Abdullah Gul warning it threatened to “drag the whole region into turmoil and bloodshed.”
A day earlier, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the “cowardice” of Assad for turning guns on his own people. Erdogan spoke of the fate of defeated dictators from Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini to Moammar Gadhafi, and bluntly told Assad to quit.