Russia says Arab League mission helping Syria

Russia said on Tuesday Arab League monitors are playing a stabilizing role in Syria, disagreeing with Syrian opposition figures who say the mission has only given President Bashar al-Assad more time to crush opponents.   

Moscow welcomed an Arab League decision to continue the two-week-old mission to monitor implementation of the government's pledge to stop a crackdown the United says has killed more than 5,000 people in ten months of protests.   

"Their deployment is already exerting a stabilizing influence on the situation and helping to provide a truthful and objective picture of what is happening," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement posted on www.mid.ru said of the observers.  

It repeated Russian calls for dialogue between Assad's government and his opponents.   

Russia has maintained support for the increasingly isolated Assad, whose nation has been one of Moscow's closest strategic partners in the Middle East and a big customer for its weapons.   

After a review meeting on Sunday, the Arab League said Damascus had only partly carried out a pledge to stop the bloodshed, free detainees and withdraw troops from cities that have been hotbeds of anti-Assad unrest. It said the number of observers would grow to 200 this week from 165.   

Opposition figures said on Monday the presence of the mission was counterproductive, giving Damascus more time to suppress its adversaries violently. There has been no apparent reduction in the bloodshed since monitors arrived on Dec. 26.  

 In his first public speech for over six months, Assad on Tuesday blamed "foreign planning" for the uprising and vowed to strike "terrorists with an iron fist".    Moscow used its veto power in the U.N. Security Council in October, along with China, to block a Western-crafted resolution that would have helped to isolate Assad's government by condemning its iron fist policy towards dissent.   

Russian warships docked at a Russian naval maintenance and supply facility in the Syrian port of Tartus over the weekend, Russian and Syrian media reported.   

Moscow angered opponents of Assad when the Foreign Ministry indicated it accepted the Arab League observer mission chief's initial assessment that the situation in Syria was "reassuring", a statement met with strong skepticism by Western nations.

Reuters