The Arab League inserted itself more forcefully into the Syria conflict, calling on the United Nations to help it create a peacekeeping force and asking Arab states to boost support of the opposition while cutting diplomatic ties to the Assad regime.
The resolution by the pan-Arab body, which formally ended its largely unsuccessful monitoring mission in Syria on Sunday, shifts the onus for resolving the increasingly militarized conflict back to the U.N. Security Council and to individual Arab states.
The Security Council is unlikely to approve the peacekeeping mission if an armed force is intended, which was unclear, since Russia and China are likely to veto it. That leaves fewer diplomatic options for halting the violence.
But the move could convince some Arab states, many of whom are keen to oust President Bashar al-Assad from power to undermine the regional influence of his ally Iran, to step up support for the opposition.
The initiative, which also called on the opposition to "unite and engage in serious dialogue," came as al Qaeda threw its weight behind the opposition movement.
The network's leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in an Internet video late on Saturday claimed common cause with the anti-Assad uprising.
"The resistance of our people in Syria is escalating and growing despite all the pains, sacrifices and blood," Mr. Zawahiri said in the eight-minute video, calling Mr. Assad's government a "cancerous regime."
Mr. Zawahiri's statement raised fears that Islamic extremists could be playing a larger role in Syria's uprising, which is made up largely of Sunni Muslims. Some Western diplomats and analysts have pointed to recent bombings in Damascus and Aleppo as bearing landmark signs of al Qaeda.
Syria's opposition blames the government for orchestrating attacks on government installations to illustrate it is fighting an Islamist insurgency.
China and Russia, which both have economic and strategic interests in Syria, have led efforts to block U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at getting Mr. Assad to step aside.
But even without the vetoes, the Arab League proposal is unlikely to materialize. U.N. peacekeeping missions are ill-equipped to intervene in armed conflicts and Mr. Assad is unlikely to accept foreign peacekeepers. With few exceptions, the U.N. deploys such missions to maintain peace once the belligerent parties have agreed to a cease-fire.
"It's a pretty desperate act," said Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Doha Center, the Qatar office of the Washington-based Brookings Institution. "In the absence of a calm environment, I don't see how you can implement something like this and I don't see how there can be agreement anyway."
Syria's ambassador in Cairo, Yousef Ahmed, denounced the league's resolution, accusing it of being Washington's pawn, Syria's state news agency said.
Faced with frustration in the Security Council, Arab governments on Sunday turned to the U.N.'s General Assembly.
Saudi Arabia's U.N. ambassador drafted a resolution nearly identical to the one China and Russia have already rejected in the Security Council, calling for Mr. Assad to step aside.
"The time has come for a decisive action to stop the bloodshed suffered by the Syrian people since the start of last year," Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby told the Arab foreign ministers. "We must move quickly in all directions…to end or break the ongoing cycle of violence in Syria."
While General Assembly resolutions aren't legally binding, 170 of the 193 member countries are likely to accept the resolution when the assembly votes this week, adding to the political pressure on Damascus.
The joint mission proposed by the Arab League on Sunday won't figure into the General Assembly resolution and no Security Council meeting had been planned to address it.
The league's proposal would replace a now-defunct Arab League observer team, whose presence since December has failed to halt Mr. Assad's crackdown on regime opponents that opposition groups say has claimed more than 7,000 lives.
The league's secretary-general on Sunday accepted the resignation of the Sudanese general who led the observer mission.
Syrian opposition activists said the Arab League resolution didn't go as far as they had hoped and said they were now counting on individual countries to raise support for them.
"The Arab League is irrelevant," said Wissam Tarif, a Beirut-based activist with Avaaz, an international aide group collecting medical supplies for besieged Syrian communities.
Mr. Tarif said Syria's opposition and activist community were focusing their efforts on the newly launched "Friends of Syria" contact group, which will include the U.S., Europe, Arab states and Turkey, and serve as a coordinating body for efforts to support the opposition.
The group's first meeting is scheduled for Tunis on Feb. 24. Mr. Tarif said he was optimistic that the group would serve as a first step toward finding arms and financing by outside powers for the opposition.
"No country is sending weapons yet, but that will change," Mr. Tarif said. "But first we need a more organized leadership on the ground."
Mr. Assad's nine-day assault on opposition neighborhoods in Homs appeared to lessen on Sunday, with six people killed there and in neighboring Rastan, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group. Another 16 people died elsewhere in the country, the group said.
Opposition neighborhoods remained largely cut off by Syrian forces, according to activists, relying on smuggling networks from neighboring countries to get basic medical supplies.
A fragile 48-hour cease-fire between opposition fighters in Zabadani, a town on the outskirts of the capital Damascus, and regime forces who residents said had been laying siege to the town for eight days, was due to expire on Monday, according to a resident who recently fled the city.
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