New Syria protests as Arabs urged to go to UN

Syrian activists held new protests Friday to demand that the government honour the terms of an Arab League deal to end 10 months of bloodshed as pressure mounted on the bloc to seek UN intervention. A widely criticised League observer mission hangs in the balance as its head, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, prepares to report to Arab foreign ministers, who will decide on Sunday whether to extend it for a second month. Syria's oil minister acknowledged on Thursday that unilateral sanctions imposed on his government by the European Union and the United States were having a significant economic impact. But Human Rights Watch said there was no sign of any let-up in the regime's crackdown despite the observers' presence, with activists reporting 506 civilians killed by the security forces and a further 490 detained since their deployment on December 26. The head of the opposition Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghaliun, headed to Cairo to lobby the Arab ministers to refer the observer mission's findings to the UN Security Council. Ghaliun planned to "ask the head of the Arab League and Arab foreign ministers to transfer the file on Syria to the UN Security Council with a view to securing a decision to establish a buffer zone and a no-fly zone" in Syria, an SNC statement said. The group, which has been strongly critical of the observer mission, said it would demand that Dabi pull no punches in his findings on the Damascus regime's compliance with the Arab League agreement. "The SNC delegation will insist that the report contain a clear text concerning the 'genocide' and 'war crimes' carried out by the (Syrian) regime against unarmed civilians," the statement said. Activists set as the slogan for the main weekly protests "Prisoners of the Revolution." They call on Syrians to take to the streets to demand that the government deliver on its promise to the Arab League to release tens of thousands of people arrested since protests first erupted last March. The League's panel on Syria is to meet on Saturday ahead of the foreign ministers' meeting. Its chair, Qatar, has called for Arab peacekeeping troops to be deployed in Syria, drawing a furious rejection from the Syrian government. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the Qatari proposal was not feasible. "In the present regional context we are not working towards such a scenario," he said in an interview published on Friday by the regional daily Ouest-France. "On the contrary, we are talking to the opposition," he added. But President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted that France -- the former colonial power in Syria -- would not stand silently by in the face of a crackdown that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 4,400 people since last March, 400 of them since the observers deployed. "We cannot accept the ferocious repression by the Syrian leadership of its people, a repression that has led the entire country into chaos, and a chaos that will help extremists of all kinds," he said. Juppe said it was clear that the Arab observer mission was "in difficulty" and not being allowed to work, and called for its report to be submitted to the UN Security Council for further action. A tough Security Council resolution on Syria has been blocked by veto-wielding permanent members Russia and China. Moscow has warned against Western calls for punitive measures against Damascus, insisting the opposition is as much to blame for the violence as the regime. But Syrian Oil Minister Sufian Allaw acknowledged on Thursday that even the unilateral sanctions imposed by the EU and US were having a major impact. "We have suffered important losses as a result of our inability to export crude oil and petroleum products," Allaw told a Damascus news conference. "The shortfall and losses from September 1 until now add up to more than $2 billion," he said. The United States has banned the import of Syrian crude and petroleum products and prohibits Americans from engaging in any transactions or dealings in or related to Syrian-origin oil. The European Union also has a ban on imports of Syrian crude, along with that of oil and gas equipment.