President Obama says Assad’s time is up, slaps tough sanctions on Syria

US President Barack Obama on Thursday said it was time for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad to resign, and said
his country was implementing tough new sanctions to help end violence in Syria. “The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar Al Assad is standing in their way,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” This was the American president’s first explicit call for Mr. Assad to step down. His administration was also slapping new sanctions on Syria. In an executive order it froze all Syrian government assets and forbade investment and exports to the country. In a statement accompanying the order Mr. Obama said Syria’s violent crackdown on anti-regime protests “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to speak about the government’s tougher stance later Thursday. Earlier in the day, Mr. Assad told UN chief Ban Ki-moon that military operations against protesters have “stopped,” a UN spokesman said. Mr. Assad’s comment came in response to Mr. Ban’s demand in a telephone conversation that “all military operations and mass arrests must cease immediately,” UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said, according to AFP. “The secretary general expressed alarm at the latest reports of continued widespread violations of human rights and excessive use of force by Syrian security forces against civilians across Syria,” Mr. Haq said in a statement that highlighted the town of Latakia, where several thousand Palestinian refugees are said to have fled their camps.

UN insistence

Mr. Ban “emphasized that all military operations and mass arrests must cease immediately. President Assad said that the military and police operations had stopped.”

About 2,000 people have been killed in a government crackdown since protests started in mid-March, according to rights groups. President Assad has promised reforms but western governments say there are few signs of them being carried out.

“The secretary general reiterated his calls for an independent investigation into all reported killings and acts of violence, and for free access by the media.” Mr. Ban called on Syria to give full cooperation to the UN human rights commissioner, who is attempting to launch an inquiry into Mr. Assad’s deadly crackdown.

Mr. Ban also demanded that Mr. Assad launch “a credible and peaceful process of reform,” according to AFP.

The UN said President Assad “enumerated the reforms he will undertake in the next few months” including constitutional change and elections. The spokesman said Mr. Ban emphasized these must go ahead “without further military intervention.”

The UN leader welcomed an agreement by the Syrian government to receive a UN humanitarian mission. Mr. Ban said the mission must “be provided with independent and unhindered access to all areas affected by violence,” according to his spokesman.

President Assad stated “that the team would have access to different sites in Syria,” the spokesman said.

Assad must go

Also on Thursday, Britain, France and Germany called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and said in a joint statement they supported imposing new European Union sanctions to help end bloodshed in Syria.
“We call on him to draw the consequences of the total rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to leave power, for the greater interest of Syria and the unity of his people,” the leaders of the three countries said in the statement.

Travel restrictions

On Wednesday, the State Department said it was imposing travel restrictions on Syrian diplomats in the United States in response to similar restrictions put on US diplomats in Damascus. Syrian diplomats must ask for permission seven days in advance to travel outside the Washington, DC, area, according to Reuters.

Syrian troops held hundreds of people in a stadium in the port city of Latakia on Wednesday, residents said. They said Syrian forces raided houses in a Sunni area of the besieged city, arresting hundreds of people and taking them to a stadium after a four-day tank assault to crush protests.

Latakia is of particular significance to President Assad, who is from Syria’s minority Alawite community. Mr. Assad comes from a village to the southeast, where his father is buried, and his family, along with friends, control Latakia’s port and its finances.

In an interview with the CBS Evening News last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made clear the United States wanted other nations to also demand Mr. Assad’s departure and to take concrete actions against the Assad regime.

The United States has been “very clear” in its statements about President Assad’s loss of legitimacy, Mrs. Clinton said in the interview. She said she wanted Europe and China to “take steps with us” against Syria.

President Obama consulted on Saturday with Saudi King Abdullah and British Prime Minister David Cameron. In both cases, the first specific topic mentioned in the White House descriptions of the calls was Syria.