Arab League official sees no ground for intervention in Syria

Moscow, June 21 (Xinhua-ANI): No U.N. resolutions on Syria have ever envisaged military support for the opposition nor military intervention into the crisis in that country, a visiting Arab League (AL) senior official said here on Thursday.

AL Deputy Secretary General Ahmed Ben Helli said the calls of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to take military intervention into Syria and arm the Syrian opposition were not the AL's consolidated position.

"Arab countries being sovereign states may decide themselves how to deal with that crisis," the official told the Interfax news agency.

"Many still remember the Libyan experience and in this situation no one wants to repeat military intervention. I guess this option has not been considered neither in Russia nor in the AL, U.S. or Europe," he said.

Ben Helli urged Moscow to stop military-technical cooperation with Damascus while admitting the U.N. did not prohibit military shipments to the Syrian government.

The top official said the U.N. ought to reconsider the mandate of the U.N.-AL joint envoy to Syria Kofi Annan so to secure a full implementation of the plan.

"To implement this plan, we need to find a new mechanism, and the mandate of the special envoy needs to be revised to make sure that all the parties will be committed to implement the plan," he said.

Iran should be among the participants in the international conference on Syria scheduled in Geneva on June 30, Ben Helli said, adding that "All players involved in the crisis in Syria must be a part of this coming contact group."

The official told local media his boss AL Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi was to visit Russia soon. (Xinhua-ANI)