Observers in Holding Pattern in Syria

Awaiting orders in Damascus. 

             

Arab League observers are cooling their heels at a hotel in Damascus, after their work was suspended Saturday.

 

The head of the mission, Mohamed Addabi, says the observers will stay in Syria until further notice.      

        

Amateur video out of Syria, which could not be independently verified, shows violence raging in other parts of the country.    

          

Russia, a U.N. Security Council member and one of Syria's few allies, said President Bashar al-Assad's government agreed to talks in Moscow to end the Syrian crisis, but a major opposition body rejected any dialogue with him.              

              

The new fighting and Russian diplomacy comes as the Arab League and France prepared to lobby the Security Council to act on a peace plan that would remove Assad from power.

              

The Russian position is in part about its internal politics says political analyst Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

              

[Maria Lipman, Carnegie Moscow Centre Political Analyst]:          

"In Russia, there's an election campaign going on. This time, the position of Vladimir Putin is weaker than any other time he has participated personally in an election campaign. He's conducting this campaign personally. And the anti-American mood that exists in Russian society - that's a mood that he simply doesn't ignore, but he has played it up for the whole duration of his leadership."    

          

It's also a question about what would work on the ground in Syria.