THE Kingdom has withdrawn its monitors from Syria owing to the failure of Bashar Al-Assad's regime to abide by its promise to stop killing its own people and allow them to form their own government. The Syrian people want to be free to choose a government which can bring them peace and a better life and which can safeguard their possessions as well as uphold their dignity and honor. Their demand should not be deemed as unlawful and a few tyrants should not be allowed to enjoy the country's bounty while the Syrian people suffer from poverty, neglect and humiliation. With the Syrian regime's intransigence, the task of putting pressure on Al-Assad to step down and allow his people to form a new government now falls on the shoulders of Arab countries and the world community. The Kingdom would not have withdrawn its observers if the Arab monitors had been allowed to see for themselves how the Arab plan was being implemented. However, it appears that the regime's promise to carry out the plan was a mere ploy to buy time and suppress the will of the Syrian people. From the start, the Kingdom has been keen to help Syria find a solution to the conflict and it participated in preparing the Arab League plan with the hope that Damascus would listen to reason. However, the Syrian regime chose to remain intransigent in a way that demeaned the character of the Arab Ummah. This is the primary reason why Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal stressed in his speech on Sunday that all Arabs must shoulder the responsibility before Allah Almighty, the Syrian people and the Arab Ummah. The Kingdom has refused to be a false witness events in Syria or to be exploited to justify the massacre of the Syrian people. Does the Syrian regime realize this? Does it realize that its intransigence and rejection of the Arab plan places it in confrontation with the world and may lead to an internationalization of the crisis? We hope that the Al-Assad regime will come to its senses and step down so that the Syrian crisis will not spill over its borders and so that the Syrian people may enjoy the blessings of peace and prosperity. __
