...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
meeting.
"We cannot accept this killing machine. We cannot allow people to be killed this way," he told a news conference at the end of a regular meeting in Cairo of the pan-Arab body, of which Syria is a member.
"The army must withdraw from inside the cities so that we can start talking about a dialogue between the people and the government," he said.
Sheikh Hamad, who is also Qatar's foreign minister, said "there are those who cast doubt on some of the intentions" of the vaporous Arab League, insisting however, that "everyone supports Syria and its stability."
Earlier he read a statement at the end of a meeting of the 22-member bloc's foreign ministers calling for an "immediate" end to the bloodshed in Syria, where the U.N. says some 2,600 people have been killed since mid-March.
"There must be an immediate change that leads to an end to the bloodshed and protection of the Syrian people from more violence and killings," said the statement read out by the chair of the meeting, Sheikh Hamad.
"The Syrian leadership must take urgent steps to implement the measures it agreed upon during the visit of the secretary general," it said referring to a peace bid by Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi.
Arabi met Syrian
President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor...
on Saturday to discuss a 13-point document outlining Arab proposals to broker an end to the bloodshed, hold elections and push for reforms in the troubled country.
Afterwards Arabi said there had been an agreement with the embattled Syrian leader "on steps to carry out the reforms, (and) the elements will be submitted to the council of the Arab League."
On Tuesday, Arabi said Assad had agreed to receive an Arab League delegation to follow-up on the agreement struck at the weekend.
"But the Arab foreign ministers believe that there must be a ceasefire (in Syria) before the departure of the delegation," he said at a joint news conference with Sheikh Hamad.
The Arab League statement said the situation in Syria "is still very dangerous" and renewed the bloc's "deep concern over the pursuit of violence and the deaths and injury of large numbers of civilians."
The League, it said, discussed on Tuesday how it can help Syria resolve the crisis "in such a way to meet the aspirations of the Syrian people, guarantee Syria's security, stability and territorial integrity and prevent foreign intervention."
On Monday, activists said Syrian security forces rubbed out 23 people, 17 of them in and around the flashpoint central city of Hama.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said that, as of Monday, a total of 2,600 people had been killed in the Syrian government's crackdown.
But senior Assad aide Buthaina Shaaban said on a visit to Moscow that 1,400 people had died since the demonstrations erupted six months ago -- half of them security force personnel and half of them "rebels".
Damascus
...The
City of Jasminis the oldest continuously-inhabited city in the world. It has not always been inhabited by the same set of fascisti...
has consistently maintained that the protests are the work of gangs, rejecting the reports of Western embassies and human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
groups that the great majority of those killed have been unarmed civilians.