Arab League foreign ministers discuss Syria

The Arab League has called an emergency meeting in Cairo to discuss whether to suspend Syria, increasing pressure on the Assad government to end its security crackdown on anti-government protesters.

Suspension is unlikely to have a direct, tangible impact on Syria, but it would still constitute a major blow to Bashar al-Assad's government by stripping it of its Arab support and further deepening its isolation.

Sunday's meeting in the Egyptian capital, requested by several Gulf Arab countries, comes about six months after initially peaceful protests calling for reform and the end of Assad's rule first began to sweep the country.

Many Gulf states have pulled their ambassadors out of Syria in protest against President Assad's crackdown, which the UN says has killed more than 3,000 people.

One official said the Arab League would consider other measures if suspending Syria fails to prompt the government to stop the bloodshed. He declined to elaborate.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to brief the media.

The UN Security Council has not condemned the violence, thanks to vetoes from Russia and China.

India, Brazil and South Africa, which hold non-permanent Security Council seats and are considered a bloc of influential developing countries, abstained from the vote, prompting criticism from Human Rights Watch.

The three countries are due to hold a forum in Pretoria, South Africa, on Monday, and the organisation urged them to use the opportunity to demand Assad's government end attacks.

"[Their] leaders shouldn't sit by and watch as Syria implodes," Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Weapons smuggling rising

Sunday's developments came a day after Syrian security forces shot dead three mourners and injured 20 others when they fired on a funeral procession for a 10-year-old boy in central Damascus.

Other troops fought army defectors west of Damascus, witnesses told the Reuters news agency.

As the uprising in Syria has dragged on, experts say weapons smuggling into the country has flourished, especially from Lebanon, with automatic weapons, grenades and hunting rifles in high demand.

They say that those behind the trafficking are smugglers in search of quick profits rather than political parties backing protesters against the regime in Syria.

"Smuggling networks that for years have operated along Syria's borders seem to have turned to weapons trafficking in recent months," Peter Harling, a Damascus-based expert with the International Crisis Group, told the AFP news agency.

"It appears that a market has quickly developed in a country which, contrary to Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen or Libya, had few weapons circulating beforehand."

Assad has alleged that foreign powers are behind the unrest in his country, which has divided opinion in the Middle East.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah has offered tacit support for Assad and continued to meet with him, while Iran has also backed Assad's government, which draws strong support from the country's Alawi denomination of Islam, to which the Assad family belongs.

The opposition to Assad is supported by the country's Muslim Brotherhood, which is Sunni and endured brutal repression under Assad's father, Hafez, a former president.

Sunni rulers in the Gulf have moved slower than Western nations in their condemnation of Assad's security crackdown but have recently taken a stronger line.

"I don't think that at this point we can say, as the Syrian regime claims, that foreign powers are playing a significant role in this," Harling said.

"People on both sides in Syria are buying weapons to defend themselves ... Residents in Alawite villages are arming themselves for fear of reprisals and the opposition is increasingly doing the same given the regime's harsh crackdown against any form of protest."

Source: Agencies