Qatar prime minister asks Security Council for military intervention in Syria

Doha: Qatar on Saturday urged UN envoy Kofi Annan to set a timeframe for his Syria peace mission, and asked the UN Security Council to apply Chapter VII which permits military intervention. “It is unacceptable that massacres and bloodshed continue while the mission is ongoing indefinitely,” Qatar Prime Minister Shaikh Hamad Bin Jasem Al Thani told a ministerial committee on Syria attended by Annan.

“We demand the UN Security Council to refer the six-point [Annan plan] to Chapter VII so that the international community could assume responsibilities,” he said. International peace envoy Kofi Annan warned on Saturday that Syria was slipping into “all-out” war, and a Syrian opposition figure said Russia had become part of the problem and should urge President Bashar AlAssad to quit power.

“The spectre of an all-out war, with an alarming sectarian dimension, grows by the day,” Annan told a meeting of members of the Arab League, co-sponsor with the United Nations of a peace plan aimed at ending the bloodshed in Syria.

Burhan Ghalioun of the Syrian National Council, the divided body claiming to speak for political opposition to [Al] Assad, said: “With its support of the regime and for [Al] Assad remaining, Russia has become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. If it cooperates to find a formula that makes [Al]Assad leave, it will become part of the solution.”