Syria Forced to Immediately Implement the AL Roadmap, Official

Deputy Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Bin Hali, assumes in this interview with Echorouk that the Syrian opposition is not “united,” and yet the AL is committed to work with different trends of this opposition. He further expresses optimism as regard of the success of the AL roadmap to find a denouement to the crisis in Syria.

President Bashar al-Assad has finally accepted the AL roadmap, which recommends launching dialogue with the opposition; yet a part of latter has openly rebuffed any dialogue.

In this regard, Mr Hali said “the opposition in Syria is not united; there is internal and external opposition parties,” adding: “but the Arab League is due to talk to all opponents, either belonging to the National Syrian Council or not.”

In fact, the Syrian National Council said Thursday that the regime plays on time, and does not deal seriously with the AL recommendations. In this context, Mr Bin Hali said: “this is a pure opinion of the council. We have a clear plan of action which the AL working group committee and the Syrian authority have accepted, so we are to implement it, 

As whether the AL has set any deadline to implement the roadmap, the official said “the roadmap recommends that it should immediately be implemented. It has already started being implemented as by Thursday, during the meeting of the Secretary General of the AL, Nabil al-Arabi with a delegation of the Syrian opposition.”

The meeting of Foreign Ministers of Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Oman and Qatar concluded to set up a working group tasked with following up the situation in Syria. It includes human rights organizations pertaining to the AL, Arab Lawyers Union, Arab Parliamentary Union, as well as Arab and international journalists, to draw up a global outcome to the situation there.