BEIRUT/DAMASCUS/ANKARA: Several Arab League monitors have left Syria or may do so soon because the mission has failed to halt President Bashar Assad’s violent crackdown on a popular revolt against his rule, an Algerian former monitor said Thursday. Syrian opposition groups say the monitors, who deployed on Dec. 26 to check whether Syria was respecting an Arab peace plan, have only bought Assad more time to crush protests that erupted in March, inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere.

The observers resumed work Thursday, a League official said, for the first time since 11 of them were injured by pro-Assad demonstrators in the port of Latakia three days ago, an attack which also sidelined plans to expand the team.
Anwar Malek, an Algerian who quit the monitoring team this week, said many of his former colleagues shared his chagrin.

“I cannot specify a number, but many. When you talk to them their anger is clear,” he told Reuters by telephone, adding that many could not leave because of orders from their governments. He said a Moroccan legal specialist, an aid worker from Djibouti and an Egyptian had also left the mission.

Their departures could not immediately be confirmed. Another monitor, who asked not to be named, told Reuters he planned to leave Syria Friday. “The mission does not serve the citizens,” he said. “It doesn’t serve anything.”

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby said Syria had only implemented parts of the agreement it had signed. “Neither the violence has stopped, nor the killing. The level has dropped, but it has not stopped,” he told Al-Hayat television.

The mission’s chief, Sudanese General Mohammad al-Dabi, speaking to reporters in Damascus, denied Malek’s comments, saying the Algerian monitor had stayed in his hotel in the city of Homs for six days, refusing to work. Malek said he stopped working last Friday after posting criticism of the mission on his Facebook page.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 21 people were killed across the country Thursday. Seven died in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor when security forces opened fire and the bodies of seven security force members were delivered to a hospital in the town of Maarat al-Noman, apparently killed in clashes with army deserters.

The Arab League, which will hear a full report from the monitors on Jan. 19, is divided over Syria, with Qatar its most vocal critic and Algeria defending steps taken by Damascus.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking after talks in Washington with Algeria’s Foreign Minister Mourad Medelci, stressed “the need to end the Assad government’s assault on its own people.”
Medelci, who had earlier said that the Assad government had taken steps to defuse the crisis, said he and Clinton had a “concurrence of views.”

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who heads the Arab League committee on Syria, said doubts were growing about the effectiveness of the monitors.
“I could not see up until now a successful mission, frankly speaking,” he told a joint news conference with Clinton in Washington. “We hope we solve it, as we say, in the house of the Arabs, but right now the Syrian government is not helping us.”

Separately, a Russian ship, allegedly carrying tons of weapons, made a dash for Syria after Cypriot officials allowed it to leave their waters, Turkish officials said Thursday.
The ship had made an unscheduled stop in Cyprus Tuesday, technically violating an EU embargo on arms shipments to Syria.

Cypriot officials – told by the ship’s owners it was heading for Syria and Turkey – only allowed the ship to leave Wednesday after the owners said it had changed its destination for Turkey only.
But Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said the ship had docked Thursday at the Syrian port of Tartous.