BEIRUT/DAMASCUS: A Syrian pipeline carrying crude from oilfields in the east of the country was blown up near the restive city of Homs Thursday, according to anti-government activists and the official news agency SANA.

Clouds of thick black smoke towered over a high-rise suburb of the city, the epicenter of popular unrest against Syrian President Bashar Assad that began in March. Refinery towers and storage tanks were visible in the background of one SANA photograph.

Rami Abdul-Rahman of the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the pipeline fed a refinery in Homs. But SANA said a terrorist group had attacked a section of pipeline taking crude beyond Homs directly to Banias on the Mediterranean coast.

Homs is a city of 800,000 people where activists say about 1,500 people have been killed in Assad’s crackdown on anti-government protests.

Meanwhile, Arab League ministers will meet this weekend to mull a response to Syria which wants the bloc to lift sanctions as its price to allow observers to monitor deadly unrest, an Arab diplomat said Thursday.

A taskforce chaired by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani and comprising the foreign ministers of Algeria, Egypt, Oman and Sudan will gather in Doha with Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby.

According to SANA, “authorities rushed to the spot, extinguished the fire, stopped pumping oil into the targeted pipeline and shifted it to alternative pipes.”

The Homs refinery serves part of Syria’s domestic requirement for oil products. Saboteurs had already blown up the pipeline to the coast near Homs in July, according to SANA.
The Observatory network reported that nine people had been killed in Homs Thursday by snipers and in “random” shootings.

Street protests began in Syria nine months ago, inspired by a wave of revolt across the Arab world. The ferocity of Assad’s crackdown triggered desertions from the armed forces, and several thousand defectors have joined a guerrilla army staging hit-and-run attacks on security forces.

Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for 41 years, is under growing international pressure to cease violent repression of protests, in which the United Nations says over 4,000 people have been killed, and negotiate with opponents.

The head of the Arab League, which has threatened to impose sanctions if Syria does not comply with a peace plan and sign an agreement allowing international monitors into the country, said Thursday “the ball is in the Syrian court.” “What we expect is as soon as possible Syria will accept to sign the protocol,” Elaraby said during a trip to Iraq. “It is up to them. [If] they want to stop the economic sanctions, they sign.”

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told a joint news conference in Baghdad with Elaraby that Iraq would try to convince Syria to accept an Arab peace deal and the deployment of monitors.
“We will exert efforts and discuss with the Syrian government how to remove all the obstacles facing this initiative,” he said.

Meanwhile, Jordan has asked the Arab League to be exempt from the bloc’s sanctions on Syria over concerns of the toll they would take on the kingdom’s already ailing economy, a senior government official said Thursday.

“Jordan supports the Arab consensus regarding the sanctions on Syria, but we have to cater to our economic interests,” the official said, insisting on anonymity.

Syria is one of Jordan’s biggest Arab commercial partners, with bilateral trade estimated at $525 million in the first nine months of this year. The country also serves as a gateway for Jordan’s trade with Lebanon, Turkey and Europe, and Damascus has $500 million in deposits in Jordanian banks and multimillion dollar investments here.

The official said Jordan contacted the Arab League two weeks ago, seeking the exemption based on a clause in the League’s sanctions decision, which states that the embargo must take into consideration the interests of Syria’s neighbors. Jordan expects an answer from the League soon, he said.

Meanwhile Russia, keen to avert any foreign intervention of the kind that toppled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, warned NATO states that outsiders should not “pick and choose the sweethearts” in Arab conflicts that were potentially sectarian. “We are, to be very frank with you, extremely concerned with the fact that we are seeing [a] growing divide within the Islamic world, between the Sunnis and the Shiites,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told counterparts at NATO headquarters.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen reiterated that NATO had “no intention whatsoever to intervene in Syria.”

Western powers as well as neighbors Turkey and Jordan are calling on Assad to step down. Turkey imposed a 30 percent duty on imports from Syria Wednesday in retaliation for a similar tax imposed on Turkish goods.

Turkish media reported two border crossings were closed Thursday by Syria, one between Nusaybin and Qamishli and another at Akcakale. Around 100 people were left waiting to cross into Syria at the Nusaybin crossing.

Turkish government officials said Syria had informed them the closure of Nusaybin was for “repair and maintenance” work and that they would be opened when the work was finished
Protesters are calling for a peaceful “dignity strike” by Syrians over the weekend, in what organizers hope to build into a general campaign of civil disobedience. Schools, universities, shops, public transport and government services are being urged to refuse to work on Sunday and close highways.

SANA said the army had fought against gunmen who tried to block the Homs-Hama-Aleppo highway Wednesday, killing one “terrorist.” It said experts had defused seven improvised bombs in Hama.