CAIRO: Arab foreign ministers were deeply divided on suspending Syria's Arab League membership in an emergency meeting on Saturday amid mounting pressure for a firm stance towards Damascus after a week of deadly violence in Homs.
The ministers, gathered in the Arab League's Cairo headquarters, called a recess early into the meeting to allow a narrowed ministerial committee to work out a final position, a source who was inside the meeting said.
He said there was a strong push by some states to suspend Syria, while others wanted to give President Bashar al-Assad's regime more time.
Khaled al-Habbas, an assistant to Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi, told reporters before the meeting that the situation in Syria was "complex" and "Arab countries are trying to find a solution that reconciles different viewpoints."
Assad's regime agreed on November 2 to an Arab roadmap which called for the release of detainees, the withdrawal of the army from urban areas and free movement for observers and the media, as well as negotiations with the opposition.
Yusef Ahmed, Syria's Arab League representative, told the ministers that Damascus was committed to implementing the agreement and had withdrawn heavy weapons from the streets of violence-hit cities, the source said.
But human rights groups say all the evidence is that the regime has actually intensified its crackdown on dissent, especially in Homs, killing at least 125 people in the flashpoint central city since signing onto the League's deal.
"Homs is a microcosm of the Syrian government's brutality," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director of Human Rights Watch, which accused the regime of crimes against humanity based on its systematic abuses against civilians.
"The Arab League needs to tell President Assad that violating their agreement has consequences, and that it now supports Security Council action to end the carnage," she said.
Human Rights Watch, like protesters and Syrian opposition leaders, urged the Arab League to suspend Syria's membership of the pan-Arab bloc as punishment for its brutal eight-month crackdown on dissent.
At least 23 people were killed in violence in Syria on Friday alone, most of them civilians in Homs, which an opposition group declared a "humanitarian disaster area" earlier this week.
Syrian security forces carried out new raids and arrests in the Homs neighbourhoods of Al-Sebaa, Bab al-Dareeb and Baba Amro on Saturday and gunfire was in the morning, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
With NATO ruling out operations and UN Security Council sanctions unlikely because veto-wielding permanent members Russia and China are allies of Assad's regime, regional actors have come to represent the best avenue to pressure Damascus.
Damascus says it has moved forward on the deal by releasing 500 prisoners and its envoy to the Arab League expressed on Friday his government's willingness to receive a pan-Arab delegation.
"This will help assess Damascus's commitment to the (Arab) plan and to unveil motives behind certain external and internal parties working for the failure of the Arab blueprint," the official SANA news agency quoted Ahmed as saying.
Despite the Assad regime's prevarication, the United States insists its days are numbered and says that even Arab leaders are encouraging him to step down quickly.
"Some Arab leaders already have begun to offer Assad safe haven in an effort to encourage him to leave peaceably and quickly," said Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman.
"Almost all the Arab leaders say the same thing -- Assad's rule is coming to an end. Change in Syria is now inevitable," Feltman told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing.
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