Arab League Live Blog

The Arab League plans to call on the UN Security Council to protect Syrian civilians under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, acording to a draft statement seen by Reuters.

"The Arab League will assign its Arab representatives in the UN Security Council in the meeting set to take place May 5 to
ask the Security Council to protect Syrian civilians immediately in accordance with Chapter Seven of the Security Council
charter," the draft read.

Chapter 7 of the UN charter allows the Security Council to authorise actions ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to military intervention.

Diplomats and finance ministry officials from the Arab world, the West and elsewhere are meeting to coordinate sanction measures taken against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's repressive regime.

The Arab League and the European Union are among more than 50 participants who want to keep up pressure on Assad despite his commitment to special envoy Kofi Annan's plan to end 13 months of violence in Syria.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe was set to kick off Tuesday's closed-door talks in Paris under the "Friends of Syria" banner. But two Arab League nations, Syrian neighbors Iraq and Lebanon, were not attending.

Diplomats say a string of EU, US and other sanctions are affecting Assad by curbing Syria's ability of export oil and the ability of his cronies to do business abroad.

- Associated Press

"The international community has a moral obligation to act," said Tayyip Erdogen, the Turkish Prime Minister, speaking at the Friends of the Syrian People conference.

"The promises have not been kept. The regime continues to kill and massacre... The demands of the Syrian people must be met.

"Our main obligation is to speak with one voice and to act with one voice, the latter being more important... In that sense, the Syrian National Council... has declared its strategy, and [which] is supported by other opposition groups. [The strategy document] says ethnic, religious or gender-based descrimination will not be tolerated"

Here are some of the statements by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad Bin Jassim al Thani, who spoke just after Erdogen:

"There is no logic to letting things continue while the Syrian regime defies the proposals for peace.

"I would like to reiterate that we support the six point plan of the UN-Arab League joint plan.

"We should examine deploying Arab joint forces in Syria to maintain peace.

"We also call on the Syrian National Council to unite all the opposition parties."

Just after the Qatari PM spoke, Nabil El Araby, the head of the Arab League, spoke. In his speech, he said the following:

"It is necessary to put the Arab League's six point plan into effect immediately to clear a path for a diplomatic solution.

"It is not acceptable to gather in Tunis, then Istanbul, then France, and to hand down statements of condemnation demanding an end to violence which has been recurring for more than one year. Thousands of lives are lost, and Syria is on the verge of plunging into the unknown.

"We must hold that the future of Syria must be decided by the Syrian people... without any international intervention."