Nabil al-Arabi's briefing to the UN security council may be a seminal moment in the history of the league
Ian Black, Middle East editor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 31 January 2012
".....With the council considering its next steps and the United States and other western countries pressing to force President Bashar al-Assad to step down, Russia is resisting fiercely. So the voice of the league matters more than ever before...
But the stakes for Syria are higher than they were for Libya. Damascus lies at the centre of a web of regional relationships involving Iran, Lebanon and Israel. Assad has more support than Gaddafi did. Assad's enemies are also divided and have no equivalent of Benghazi, where Libya's uprising began......
It is no coincidence that Al-Arabi is being accompanied to the UN by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani, prime minister and foreign minster of Qatar, the tiny but wealthy Gulf state that has played a key role in the Arab spring.
Bin Jassim, chairing the league's Syria committee, has been calling the shots.....
Russia's position will be crucial. Critics accuse it of acting to defend its own interests – arms sales and a key Syrian naval base – as well as opposing a western agenda after what happened in Libya. There was an intriguing hint on Tuesday by its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, that Assad remaining in power was not a "prerequisite" for resolving the crisis.
This is a big moment for al-Arabi and the organisation he heads..."
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