Reuters

BEIRUT/UNITED NATIONS: Gulf Arab states withdrew their observers from Syria Tuesday after it rejected an Arab League plan for President Bashar Assad to surrender power, prompting the group’s chief to call for U.N. help in ending Syria’s bloody upheaval.
 
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem accused the League of plotting to engineer foreign intervention. Thousands of civilians and members of security forces have been killed in the 10-month-old uprising against Assad.
 
Despite Syria’s anger, Moallem agreed to extend by a month the mission of the remaining Arab League observers who are monitoring implementation of a plan to end the bloodshed. But he scornfully rejected the League’s latest proposal.
 
“Definitely the solution in Syria is not the solution suggested by the Arab League, which we have rejected. They have abandoned their role as the Arab League and we no longer want Arab solutions to the crisis,” Moallem said.
 
“Heading to the Security Council will be the third stage in their plan, and the only thing left is the last step of internationalization,” he told a news conference in Damascus. “They can head to New York or to the moon. So long as we are not paying for their tickets it is none of our concern.”
 
The revolt in Syria was inspired by others that have toppled three Arab leaders and the bloodshed has battered Assad’s standing in the world, with Iran among his few remaining allies.
 
On Tuesday, the death toll rose to 26 by the evening, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Fifteen were killed in clashes between state forces and armed rebels in the flashpoint province of Homs.
 
Arab League officials said 55 Gulf Arab observers were being withdrawn while the other 110 members of the team would continue work in Syria.
 
State news agency SANA said Moallem told Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby that Damascus had agreed to extend the monitoring mission until Feb. 23.
 
The Gulf Cooperation Council states said in a statement they were “certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue, and that the Syrian regime would not abide by the Arab League’s resolutions.”
 
Elaraby and Qatari Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jassim al-Thani, who heads the League’s committee on Syria, sent a joint letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon giving details of the organization’s latest plan for a political solution in Syria.
 
The letter asks for a “joint meeting between them in the U.N. headquarters to inform the Security Council about developments and obtain the support of the Council for this plan,” a League statement said.
 
The Saudi ambassador to Britain, Prince Mohammad Bin Nawaf, said the idea of resorting to the Security Council was to rally the world behind the Arab League peace initiative for Syria.
 
“We pulled out [the monitors] because we didn’t see any positive response from the Syrian government. But it is a process. Take it to the U.N. Security Council to get the support on that initiative,” the Saudi ambassador told journalists in London.
 
“We hope it doesn’t reach an escalation of a military intervention. The last thing we want is an unstable region. We hope the Syrian regime will comply with the Arab initiative. I think this is the logical way out, a peaceful solution, a peaceful transition. I think this is the only hope they have.”
 
Moallem poured contempt on the Arab League’s call for Assad to hand power to a unity government to defuse the violence.
 
He said that while “half the universe is against us,” Syria’s longtime ally and arms supplier Russia, which wields a veto on the Security Council, would never permit foreign intervention. “That is a red line for them.”
 
Britain, France and the United States sharply criticized Russia Tuesday for supplying weapons to Syria, after a Russian official said that his country has had arms delivered to Damascus.
 
“We are concerned about the supply of weapons into Syria, whether sales to the government or illegal smuggling to the regime or opposition,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant told the Security Council during a debate on the Middle East.
 
Without mentioning Russia by name, Lyall Grant cited a media interview in which a Russian official said his country’s arms deliveries to the Syrian regime had had no effect on the situation there.
 
“We fundamentally disagree,” he told the 15-nation council. “It is glaringly obvious that transferring weapons into a volatile and violent situation is irresponsible and will only fuel the bloodshed.”
 
The Syrian president has used troops and tanks to try to crush a popular revolt that began last March, killing over 5,000 people, according to U.N. figures.
 
Syria bought $700 million worth of Russian weapons, or 7 percent of Russia’s $10 billion in arms deliveries abroad in jet trainers for over half a billion dollars in 2010, according to the Russian defense think-tank CAST.
 
An unidentified Russian military source was quoted as saying in December that the country had delivered anti-ship Yakhont missiles to Syria, and a Russian newspaper reported Monday that it also had signed a deal to sell Syria nearly 40 fighter jet trainers.
 
French Ambassador Gerard Araud said it was “unacceptable that certain countries, including on this council, continue to provide the means of violence against the Syrian population.”
 
The United States and their European allies have called for a U.N. arms embargo and other sanctions against Syria, but Russia vehemently opposes United Nations Security Council action.