Syria rejects new plan Arab League

 Syrians demonstrated outside the Arab League headquarters on Sunday  (AFP)

Syria's state-run news agency says Damascus rejects a new Arab League plan aiming to end the country's 10-month crisis.The agency quotes an unnamed official as saying Syria considers the plan "a violation of its sovereignty and flagrant interference in its internal affairs."

Monday's announcement came a day after Qatari Foreign Minister Sheik Hamad Bin Jassem Bin Jabr Al Thani told reporters after an Arab Foreign Ministers meeting in Cairo that the Arab League was launching a new initiative to solve the crisis.

The new initiative calls on the Syrian government and the opposition to form a unity government within two weeks to lead to the country through a transitional period in which elections would be held and a new constitution written.

 The new plan was to go hand in hand with an extension by a month of an observer mission that originally aimed at overseeing a peace plan agreed by the Syrian government in November. Saudi Arabia, however, pulled out its observers because it said the regime was not honouring the accord.

 The new plan was also rejected by an opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees (LCC). The group, which organises anti-regime protests, said in a statement received in Nicosia that the plan  was "unattainable" and would allow President Bashar al-Assad's regime more time to pursue its bloody crackdown."The Syrian people have lost confidence in the Arab League's ability to stop the regime’s ongoing bloodshed," the LCC said. "It is clear that the regime has been pulling the country towards chaos and destruction while the Arab League remains stagnant."The LCC  said 795 people were killed in the first month of the mission, "making it a failure in accomplishing all of its initiatives."

The League on Sunday asked the UN to support the new plan that sees Assad transferring power to his deputy and a government of national unity within two weeks.