By Alex Spillius, Washington
DATE: WED Aug 10, 2011
President Barack Obama is set to call for the first time on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to step down, according to reports on Tuesday night.
Turking Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (right) meets with Syrian President Bashar al- Assad Photo: AP
The announcement will be made this week and will be accompanied by new sanctions by the US Treasury Department targeted at individuals in the regime and Syrian government finances, said CNN.
An administration official did not comment on the report, but said: “We’ve previously said Syria would be a better place without Assad, that we believe his regime will be left in the past, and that Assad is on his way out. We’ve also previously indicated that we’d continue to increase pressures, including possible sanctions.”
The Obama administration has been criticised for failing to demand Mr Assad’s departure earlier, but continued violence committed by the regime against protesters has finally brought a change of approach.
Earlier in the day a spokesman for the State Department conceded that Washington had abandoned it bid to engage Damascus.
“In the case of Syria, the message from 2009 was if you are prepared to be a reformer, if you are prepared to work with us on Middle East peace and other issues we share, we can have a new and different kind of partnership,” said Victoria Nuland. But “that is not the path that Assad chose,” she added.
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Syrian forces killed at least 47 people across the country on Tuesday and moved into a town near the Turkish border.
Mr Assad defiantly declared an unceasing battle against the “terrorist groups”. “We will not waver in our pursuit of terrorist groups,” Mr Assad told Ahmet Davutoglu, the visiting Turkish foreign minister.
Army tanks and fighting vehicles advanced through deserted streets in both the west and east of Syria, bringing death and destruction to places that had hitherto been spared and inflicting fresh misery on cities still reeling from the onslaught of recent days.
The scale of the military operations suggested that Mr Assad was in no mood to heed the demands of Saudi Arabia and its allies for an immediate halt to the killing of civilians.
With Western pressure yielding few dividends, Syria’s regional friends and champions in the wider world have taken it upon themselves to intervene in the worsening crisis.
Turkey sent Mr Davutoglu, to deliver a stern warning that Ankara had “run out of patience” with Mr Assad’s government.
In what appeared to be a gesture of defiance, Syrian tanks rolled into the village of Binnish, just 20 miles from the Turkish border, killing at least four people, according to opposition groups.
Turkey became a belated critic of the Syrian crackdown after thousands of civilians escaped onto its soil following an earlier military offensive against border towns and villages. The tales of horror the refugees brought with them did much to galvanise public opinion in Turkey against Mr Assad, leading to pressure on the government to take a firmer stance.
Brazil, India and South Africa, which all helped to scotch Western attempts to secure a United Nations Security Council resolution against Syria, are also to send envoys to Damascus tomorrow to plead for restraint.
Russia, traditionally Syria’s most powerful international champion, added its weight to the escalating pressure. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, telephoned his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem yesterday with a plea for the bloodshed to end.
Instead, however, the death toll mounted. Nearly 400 people have been killed since Mr Assad launched a fresh military offensive against opposition strongholds on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the beginning of last week. More than 2,000 have died since the uprising began in mid-March.
Deir al-Zor, a tribal city in Syria’s sparsely populated east, came under fresh artillery and automatic gunfire as tanks and troops cleared the city of opposition suburb by suburb. At least 17 people were killed yesterday, the third day of operations in the city, opposition groups said.
Syrian state television denied that any tanks were in the city, the country’s fifth largest, a claim challenged by amateur video footage showing tanks advancing down empty streets amid heavy bursts of gunfire and the crump of exploding shells.
“The situation is desperate,” one Syrian activist who has been in touch with people in the city said. “People are burying their dead in gardens and in small parks because it is too dangerous to go to cemeteries. Snipers are everywhere.”
To the west, a new assault was launched on villages close to the Hama, the city that bore the brunt of the Ramadan offensive last week.
