Russia said on Tuesday Arab League monitors are playing a stabilizing role in Syria, disagreeing with Syrian opposition figures who say the mission has only given President Bashar Assad more time to crush opponents.
Moscow welcomed an Arab League decision to continue the two-week-old mission to monitor implementation of the government's pledge to stop a crackdown the United Nations says has killed more than 5,000 people in ten months of protests."[The monitors'] deployment is already exerting a stabilizing influence on the situation and helping to provide a truthful and objective picture of what is happening," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.
