Arab League to hold emergency meeting on Syria

The Arab League (AL) will hold an emergency ministerial meeting on Saturday to discuss the continued violence in Syria whose government has accepted an Arab initiative to end the country's seven-month-long turmoil, the Egyptian official news agency MENA reported Sunday.

The report, quoting an AL statement, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim had called for "an emergency Arab League council meeting at foreign minister level next Saturday to look at the latest developments in Syria."

The meeting, after one AL committee meeting to be attended by foreign ministers of some Arab countries slated for Friday evening, will focus on "the continuing violence and the government's failure to stick to its obligations under the Arab Action Plan to solve the crisis in Syria," according to the statement.

The Syrian government on Wednesday accepted a peace plan put forward by the AL to end the crisis in the country without any reservation in an extraordinary meeting.

The plan calls for ending violence, withdrawing military vehicles from Syrian streets, in addition to releasing detainees and holding dialogue between the government and the opposition at the AL headquarters.