Arab League head Nabil Al-Arabi (right) talks to Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (center) as they arrive to attend a Syrian opposition conference in Cairo, Monday. — Reuters CAIRO — The head of the Arab League called Monday for the fragmented Syrian opposition to unite and said a UN-brokered plan for a transitional government in Syria fell short of expectations. Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Arabi addressed nearly 250 members of the Syrian opposition at a meeting here in an effort to coax the disparate groups to pull together. The gathering marked the first time the Arab League had hosted a gathering of the Syrian opposition. However, divisions continued among groups opposed to President Bashar Al-Assad's regime. Rebel fighters and activists boycotted the two-day meeting, denouncing it as a “conspiracy" that served the policy goals of Damascus allies Moscow and Tehran. “We refuse all kinds of dialogue and negotiation with the killer gangs...and we will not allow anyone to impose on Syria and its people the Russian and Iranian agendas," said a statement signed by the rebel Free Syrian Army and “independent" activists. At the conference, Al-Arabi said there was an opportunity that must be seized. “I say and repeat that this opportunity must not be wasted under any circumstance. The sacrifices of the Syrian people are bigger than us and more valuable than any narrow differences or factional disputes," he said. Al-Arabi also said that UN special envoy Kofi Annan's new plan to form a transitional government in Syria to end the country's crisis fell short of Arab expectations. The plan, which was accepted by an international conference in Geneva on Saturday, left the door open — at Russia's insistence — to President Assad being a part of the interim administration. As violence continued in the country, Assad issued three new “counter-terrorism" laws, the official SANA news agency said. The first law stipulates that a state employee convicted of “any act of terrorism — whether he is directly engaged, an accessory to the crime, or providing material or moral support to terrorist groups in any way — will be fired," SANA said. The second law provides for jail terms of 10 to 20 years with hard labor for any act of violence or kidnap for ransom, SANA said. It gave no details of the third law. Meanwhile, the Syrian army kept up its bombardment of rebel neighborhoods of the central city of Homs, activists said, after 79 people were killed in violence across the country the previous day. Thirty-eight civilians, six of them children, were among Sunday's dead, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. — Agencies
