Syria: Road map could end crackdown

Syria plans to bring a plan to the Arab League in Cairo to end its deadly crackdown against anti-government forces, Syrian state TV reported. "Syria and the Arab League are in agreement over the final paper concerning the situation in Syria," Syrian Television and the official Syrian Arab News Agency said Tuesday evening, following a meeting with a league delegation this past weekend in the Gulf state of Qatar. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem discussed the plan during talks in Doha Monday with Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the news agency said. Neither the news agency nor Syrian TV offered details about the agreement, which the report said is to be presented Wednesday. League Deputy Secretary-General Ahmed Ben Heli, told the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV news channel the group had not received Syria's response. Syrian President Bashar Assad is president of the Arab League Council, the league's principal institution. Citing Arab diplomats, Voice of America reported the plan calls for Assad to withdraw security forces from the streets, stop violence by pro-government forces against civilians, release prisoners detained since February, begin talks with the Syrian opposition in Cairo and let Arab monitors enter the country. The Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, based in London, quoted diplomatic sources as saying Syria did not want to talk with opposition leaders outside Damascus, its capital, because meeting in Cairo or another foreign location would give the opposition too much credibility. Most Syrian opposition figures have rejected dialogue with the Assad regime as long as it continues its brutal crackdown on activists and protesters. Security forces Tuesday killed at least nine people across Syria -- four in Homs, two in the Damascus suburbs and three in the northwest -- opposition activists said. The United Nations says more than 3,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which began with protests Jan. 26 and escalated into an uprising March 15, inspired by the Arab Spring revolutions that toppled three Arab leaders. Syrian authorities blame arms smugglers, "terrorists" and "armed gangs" for killing civilians and more than 1,100 security-force members. Responding to the Arab League's call for Assad to withdraw security forces from Syria's streets, Gov. Anas el-Naem of Syria's Hama province, whose capital was besieged by Syrian forces, told Britain's Daily Telegraph, "They ask us to withdraw the army without offering any solution for the armed gangs." The U.S. State Department, which has imposed sanctions on Syria's oil industry and key state businesses since the crackdown began, said Assad's acceptance and genuine carrying out of the league's proposal would be "very welcome." But "we have had a lot of promises of reform, and only violence in terms of the action that we have seen from the Assad regime," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a Washington briefing. "So let's wait and see: a) whether we really have a deal here and b) whether that deal is implemented."