An Arab League official says an advance team will travel to Syria Thursday to prepare for an observer mission that the Syrian government agreed to this week. The mission is tasked with ensuring the regime's compliance with an Arab plan for ending the nation's political violence. The 12-member advance team will be led by the Arab League's assistant secretary-general, Sameer Seif El-Yazal. The team will include legal, administrative, financial and human rights experts to discuss the makeup of the observer teams. The League has a list of the names of some 100 observers from Arab, non-governmental organizations and representatives of Arab countries, however the number is likely to increase. The team will be led by a Sudanese general with experience of peacekeeping. Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Arabi, meanwhile, said in an interview Tuesday that monitors could be in Syria before the end of the month on an unprecedented mission to assess whether Damascus is implementing an Arab plan to end a bloody crackdown on protests. “I can say with some assurance but not certainty that before the end of next week they (monitors) will all be there,” , adding it was the first such mission since the League was set up in 1945. “It is a completely new mission, an uncharted mission in every sense of the word and, as with every agreement in the world, it depends on implementation in good faith,” he said, adding monitors could see in just a week if Syria was complying. Monday's deal with the Arab League came after weeks of prevarication and failed to convince either the opposition or Western governments which have been pushing for tough UN action to punish the regime's deadly protest crackdown. The plan also calls for a complete halt to the violence, releasing detainees and the military's complete withdrawal from towns and residential zones. Syria must also hold talks with the opposition under League auspices.
