Arab League Decides to Back Syria Opposition, Calls for U.N.-Arab Peacekeeping Force

The Arab League said it agreed on Sunday to open contacts with Syria's opposition and to ask the United Nations to form a joint peacekeeping force to the unrest-swept country in moves swiftly rejected by Syria.

Arab diplomats "will open channels of communication with the Syrian opposition and offer full political and financial support, urging (the opposition) to unify its ranks," it said in a statement obtained by Agence France Presse.

They would also "ask the U.N. Security Council to issue a decision on the formation of a joint U.N.-Arab peacekeeping force to oversee the implementation of a ceasefire," it said.

Arab diplomats were holding marathon talks that began with a meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council, followed by the Arab League committee on Syria.

The 22-member bloc also announced it had formally ended its own observer mission to Syria, which was suspended last month because of an upsurge in violence.

The Arab ministers called for a "halt to all kinds of diplomatic cooperation with representatives of the Syrian regime in all states and organizations and international conferences," but will leave it to each country to implement that decision.

And they welcomed a call from Tunisia to hold a meeting on Syria in Tunis on February 24.

In the statement, they also stressed "the implementation of economic sanctions and an end to commercial relations with the Syrian regime, except in what concerns the Syrian people directly."

Only Algeria and Lebanon expressed reservations against the resolution, an Arab League official said.

Syria's ambassador to Cairo "categorically" rejected the Arab League moves.

"The Syrian Arab Republic categorically rejects the decisions of the Arab League," which "reflects the hysteria of these governments" after failing to get foreign intervention at the U.N. Security Council, Youssef Ahmed said in a statement.

According to Ahmed, who did not attend the meetings, Syria "has said from the outset that it is not concerned by any decision taken by the Arab League in its absence."

The pan-Arab bloc's statement showed "the coordinated work and decisions of the League ... are hostage to the governments of (certain) Arab countries headed by Qatar and Saudi Arabia" working in collaboration with the West, he charged.

It also demonstrated "the state of hysteria and turmoil that the governments of these countries are experiencing after their failure in the Security Council," Ahmed added.

The Syrian ambassador said the West planned to "redistribute the cards in the region, in order to impose a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, resulting in the loss of (Arab) rights and land."

Earlier on Sunday, an Arab League official told AFP that Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi was due to officially hand in his resignation at the foreign ministers' meeting.

The 22-member League has put forward a plan for Assad to hand over power to his deputy and for the formation of a government of national unity ahead of elections.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon had broached the idea of a joint Arab-U.N. mission this month as he bemoaned the Security Council's failure to agree a resolution on the crisis in the face of Chinese and Russian opposition.

The pan-Arab bloc has already put forward a plan for Assad to transfer power to his deputy and for a government of national unity to be formed ahead of elections.

On Sunday, Syrian government newspaper Ath-Thawra charged that Arab nations were in the pay of Western powers.

"There will probably be no surprises because the orders have already been sent. They do not decide anything; they just carry out orders. They have done that in the past and they will do it today," it said of the Cairo meetings.

State television aired live footage Sunday of an official funeral for the 28 people authorities say were killed in twin car bombs in the northern city of Aleppo on Friday.

The authorities blamed "terrorists" for the attacks, but the rebel Free Syrian Army accused the regime of launching them "to steer attention away from what it is doing in Homs, Zabadani and elsewhere."

A U.S. media report citing unnamed American officials said al-Qaida's Iraqi branch was likely to have carried out the Aleppo bombings, along with attacks in Damascus in December and January.

Iraq's deputy interior minister, Adnan al-Assadi, told AFP that Baghdad has "intelligence information that a number of Iraqi jihadists went to Syria" and that "weapons smuggling is still ongoing."

And al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri voiced his support for Syria's uprising in a new video posted on jihadist Internet forums, U.S. monitors SITE Intelligence said.

Rights groups say more than 6,000 people have died since protests began in Syria in March last year, inspired by similar movements in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The Syrian government has sought to blame foreign-backed "armed terrorist gangs" for the violence.

A commission tasked with drafting a new constitution submitted a draft charter on Sunday to Assad, who is to review the charter before referring it to the People's Assembly, the official SANA news agency reported.