By KAREEM FAHIM
DAMASCUS, Syria — Denouncing a new Arab League peace proposal that calls for Syria’s embattled president to hand over power to his deputy, the government emphatically rejected the plan on Monday, calling it a blatant infringement on Syrian sovereignty and evidence of a “conspiratorial scheme.”
The rejection, reported SANA, the official Syria news agency, came less than 24 hours after the Arab League unexpectedly floated the proposal, under which President Bashar al-Assad would relinquish power to a deputy and start negotiations with opponents within two weeks.
There had been little expectation of a positive response to the proposal from President Assad, who has cast the rebellion against his family’s four decades in power as a crime wave by terrorists backed by hostile foreign powers, including Qatar and the United States.
President Assad’s refusal to acknowledge his political opponents, combined with the failure of the Arab League’s observer mission here to end months of violence and the growing prominence of armed militias, have reinforced fears that Syria’s political crisis is devolving into a civil war.
“Syria considers these decisions a violation of its national sovereignty, a blatant interference in its internal affairs and a flagrant violation of the objections for which the Arab League was established,” the SANA statement about the Arab League proposal said. “Syria condemns this decision, which came in the framework of the conspiratorial scheme hatched against Syria which have been exposed to our people and the Arab Homeland,” the statement added.
The Arab League proposal appeared to have been modeled on the agreement signed in November by President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and was formally presented on Sunday at the league’s headquarters in Cairo. Like the Yemen agreement, the proposal for Syria called for a government of national unity to be formed within two months, followed by presidential and parliamentary elections.
Representatives of the Syrian National Council, an opposition group, welcomed the proposal on Sunday, but also signaled the likelihood of failure because of its condition that there would be no negotiations until Mr. Assad stepped down.
With little immediate chance of success, the proposal reflected divisions within the Arab League over how to confront the Syrian crisis, as well as the league’s sense of helplessness as the death toll mounts. Hundreds of people have been killed by security forces since the league sent observers to the country in early December, and armed opponents of the government have demonstrated growing power in recent weeks.
Twenty miles from Damascus, former soldiers and armed residents have wrested control of the city of Zabadani from the army, though few people in the town think the government intends to keep its troops away for long. Activists in the town of Douma, about 10 miles from Damascus, said Sunday that after a day of heavy clashes there, defecting soldiers controlled three neighborhoods, though the security forces were still present.
Ahmed, an antigovernment activist who spoke on condition that his last name be withheld, said that hundreds of soldiers in the area had defected in recent weeks. “If Douma is liberated, that means that the next attack will be in the heart of Damascus,” he said. “The Assad army becomes weaker and weaker, while the armed resistance and the Free Syrian Army becomes stronger,” he added, referring to a militia made up of defectors.
Feelings were just as strong at the country’s largest military hospital, in Damascus, where doctors and administrators said about 25 wounded soldiers were now arriving each week, and roughly the same number of corpses. Two soldiers from the same company nursed wounds at the hospital that they said they received in separate ambushes near the Lebanese border. They said their well-armed opponents were part of an “outside conspiracy.”
“It will end soon,” said one.
Down the hall, Dr. Wahib Sultan said opposition groups had given ordinary Syrians little reason to support them. “We want some change,” he said, but “they don’t give us any political program, any social program.” He added, “No one in any country can accept what is happening here.”
Saudi Arabia and Qatar have pushed for more aggressive action against Syria. On Sunday, the Saudi foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, said that his country would withdraw its observers from the Arab League delegation, whose mandate was renewed on Sunday for another month, because the “Syrian government did not implement the Arab plan,” according to The Associated Press.
He was referring to an earlier plan, agreed to by the Syrian government, that called for it to withdraw tanks and heavy weapons from cities and to release political prisoners. On Sunday, the league said Syria had not fully complied, though it cited signs of progress.
The new plan calls for elections within five months to an assembly that would draft a new Syrian constitution. Foreign ministers of the league’s members said they would ask the United Nations Security Council to endorse it.
While the Yemen agreement called for President Saleh to hand over power to his deputy in exchange for immunity from prosecution, the new Arab League proposal for Syria made no mention of immunity, but called for an independent body “to investigate abuses.”
Louay Hussein, a prominent Syrian opposition activist in Damascus, said the league’s plan reflected the changing nature of the conflict in Syria. “We are facing a crisis, and the violence is spreading,” Mr. Hussein said. “Some parties in the opposition are seeking a Libyan scenario, but we are confronting this plan. We should enter a political process.”
