Former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam called on the Arab League to take actions that would delegitimize the Syrian regime and its president. Meanwhile, Arab foreign ministers began their meeting on Saturday afternoon to discuss ways to pressure the Syrian regime into stopping the violence.
The meeting began with a closed session, in which the Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid Al-Muallem, was absent. He also did not attend the previous ministerial meeting on November 2 of this year. Syria is represented at the meeting by its ambassador to the Arab League, Youssef Ahmed.
The meeting is discussing the necessary steps to deal with the developments in Syria in light of the report prepared by the Arab Ministerial Committee on the Syrian crisis during a closed meeting held on Friday evening in Cairo, which lasted until the early hours of Saturday.
Khaddam, the Secretary-General of the General Authority for Supporting the Syrian Revolution, called on Arab countries in a statement distributed by the authority from its headquarters in Paris on Saturday. He urged them to adopt further decisions, including sanctions, such as freezing the Syrian regime’s membership in the Arab League, prohibiting financial, economic, and commercial dealings with it, and freezing the financial assets of the regime and its associates in Arab countries.
He also appealed to the Arab League to impose sanctions similar to those adopted by the European Union, whether economic or political, on the Syrian president and regime figures.
Khaddam expressed his hope that during the Saturday meeting, the Arab League would adopt decisions that “respond to the aspirations of the Syrians for liberation and determining their destiny, and to escape from a regime that has increased its oppression and corruption, continuing its acts of killing, destruction, torture, detention, invasion of cities and villages, violation of the sanctity of homes, and the basic rights of citizens for the past nine months.”
He appealed to the Arab League Council, which is meeting for the second time to discuss the dire situation in Syria and the outcomes of the recent initiative, to realize that any attempt to float the regime or keep it afloat would pose a major danger not only to Syria but also to the region.
