BEIRUT: Tens of thousands of Syrians protested under the banner “The Arab League is killing us” Friday as the Arab League indefinitely postponed a meeting on the crisis because of divisions over how to proceed with an initiative to end the violence.

The protests came after Russia, a longtime Syrian ally, drew a guarded response from Western governments to signs it is toughening its stance on Syria at the U.N. Security Council.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 200,000 protested in the besieged central city of Homs alone, venting their frustration at the Arab League for postponing the scheduled Saturday meeting.

On Nov. 27, the Arab bloc approved a package of sanctions against Damascus after it failed to meet a deadline to agree to an observer mission to monitor implementation of an Arab plan to protect Syrian civilians.
Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem told the league Syria would accept monitors under certain conditions, which included the lifting of the sanctions.

The bloc’s number two Ahmad Ben Helli said late Thursday that Saturday’s planned meeting had been postponed indefinitely while talks continued with Damascus.
Instead, a league task force chaired by Qatar will gather in Doha Saturday with delegates from Egypt, Algeria, Sudan and Oman, Ben Helli said.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby also met Thursday with members of the opposition Syrian National Council on the eve of the opening in Tunisia Friday evening of a three-day congress of the group.
SNC leader Burhan Ghalioun said it was vital that the opposition close ranks after the formation in Istanbul Thursday of the National Alliance, another opposition grouping.

“We need to unite the opposition and make it stronger. We need to emerge from this congress with a higher level of organization, clearer targets and more momentum,” Ghalioun told AFP.

However, announcing the formation of the National Alliance, Mohammad Bessam Imadi, a former Syrian ambassador to Sweden, charged that the SNC had “lost contact with local revolutionary movements in Syria.”

The opposition has been pushing hard for the Security Council to take tough action against Damascus after a European draft resolution that would have threatened “targeted measures” against regime figures was blocked by Beijing and Moscow in October.

The draft circulated unexpectedly by Russia Thursday to the Security Council expands and toughens Moscow’s previously rejected text, adding a new reference to “disproportionate use of force by Syrian authorities.”It also “urges the Syrian government to put an end to suppression of those exercising their rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association.”

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters it “considerably strengthens all aspects of the previous text” and that “clearly the Syrian authorities are singled out in a number of instances.”

He said Russia did not believe both sides in Syria were equally responsible for violence, but he acknowledged the resolution called on all parties to halt violence and contained no threat of sanctions, which he said Moscow continued to oppose.

In line with Moscow’s insistence that its ally has been facing an armed rebellion and not the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations cited by the West, the draft also raises concern over “the illegal supply of weapons to the armed groups in Syria.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed renewed criticism of that position but said the United States hoped it could work with Russia on the text. “There are some issues in it that we would not be able to support. There’s unfortunately a seeming parity between the government and peaceful protesters,” she said.

France, however, labeled the draft “unacceptable.” While French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said that a U.N. resolution should be quickly adopted condemning crimes against humanity in Syria and supporting a credible, political solution, he added: “It [France] is ready to work with all of its partners but it underlines that the Russian text has elements that are not acceptable in their current form.
“It’s in particular unacceptable to put the Syrian regime’s repression on the same level as the Syrian people’s resistance,” he said.

Diplomatic sources told the Associated Press that the U.N. Security Council was waiting to see what the Arab League would do before it went ahead with a U.N. resolution. Because of Russia’s strong objections to sanctions, Western powers want to follow the Arab League’s lead.

The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iraq, Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Lebanon and Oman favored an Arab-led solution to the Syrian crisis and rejected Western political interference. Another camp led by Gulf nations, as well as Tunisia and Libya, was seeking the help of the international community in pushing for Assad’s ouster, he said.

Despite their differences, Arab leaders are opposed to a scenario similar to that of Libya, where NATO intervention helped rebel fighters oust Moammar Gadhafi and shattered the country’s security apparatus.
Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki told France 24 Thursday that he opposed foreign intervention in Syria.

The Syrian crisis, which the U.N. estimates has left more than 5,000 people dead since mid-March, was to be discussed at talks Friday between U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Turkish President Abdullah Gul in Ankara. Panetta told reporters in Ankara that the Russian draft showed the international community was coming together to “say to Syria and to the Assad regime that we can no longer tolerate the kind of killings that have gone on.”