DTN News - SYRIA UNREST: Arab League Punishes Syria Over Violent Crackdown
(NSI News Source Info) TORONTO, Canada / CAIRO, Egypt - November 27, 2011: The Arab League approved tough economic sanctions against Syria on Sunday to press it to end its violent crackdown against antigovernment protesters, an unprecedented step against an Arab country.
The sanctions — including a travel ban against Syrian officials and politicians, a halt to dealings with the Syrian Central Bank and the end of Arab-financed projects in the country — will be another blow to the Syrian economy, which is suffering from sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States.
The Arab League, meeting outside Cairo, approved the measures after Syria said it would not admit Arab civilian and military observers to oversee a peace agreement intended to end the bloodshed.
“The position of the people, and the Arab position, is that we must end this situation urgently,” the Qatari foreign minister, Hamad bin Jassem, said after announcing the sanctions, which were supported by 19 of the league’s 22 countries. “It has been almost a year that the Syrian people have been killed.”
Syria had accepted the peace agreement on Nov. 2, promising to end a military crackdown that, according to the United Nations, has killed more than 3,500 people since March. But the violence has continued unabated, and the monitors were proposed as a last-ditch effort to save the plan and give Syria another opportunity to comply.
Mr. Jassem said that the sanctions would take effect immediately and that the resolution called for the United Nations Security Council to adopt similar measures.
The Syrian government and its supporters denounced the sanctions as an attempt by outsiders to break up the country.
“In the war against Syria, the economic will take the place of the limited possibility of military intervention,” said a Lebanese analyst who is close to Syria, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The sanctions, he said, aim “to deconstruct Syria, not to reform Syria.”
In a letter to the league on Saturday, Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, accused the organization of seeking to turn the Syrian crisis into an international one and “to interfere in Syria’s internal affairs.”
Analysts said they expected the impact of the sanctions to be limited, in large part because Syria’s largest trading partners will not participate.
Economists estimate that about 50 percent of Syrian trade is with the Arab world, but the largest chunk of that is with its immediate neighbors, including Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.
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