CAIRO — President Barack Obama on Thursday issued his first explicit call for the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad and imposed the harshest sanctions yet on Assad’s assets in hopes of choking off funding for a deadly crackdown against anti-government demonstrators.
Obama’s statement that it was time for Assad to “step aside” was issued in concert with several European allies, who also demanded for the first time that the Syrian leader leave office over his regime’s brutal response to a 5-month-old popular uprising.
“The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al Assad is standing in their way,” Obama’s statement said. “His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering his own people.”
Similarly worded statements came from Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the European Union.
The tougher talk followed weeks of reluctance by the United States and European and Arab allies to call for Assad’s resignation, apparently out of worry over who would follow the Assad family after its four decades in power.
On Thursday, the White House left little room to question its stance: Obama signed an executive order to freeze all Syrian government assets within U.S. jurisdiction and banned American citizens everywhere from doing business with the regime. That degree of economic isolation puts Syria on par with pariah states such as North Korea and Myanmar.
Human-rights activists put the death toll in Syria at around 2,000 since the unrest began as part of the wave of Arab protests.
The pressure on Assad could increase even further if Europe — the recipient of the vast majority of Syria’s oil and gas exports — follows suit in imposing harsh new petroleum sanctions. Dow Jones Newswires reported that European ambassadors would consider such action in a meeting today.
Radwan Ziadeh, director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, praised Thursday’s moves as a morale boost for protesters and a “significant step” for the White House. Still, he said by phone from Geneva, the EU could strike a far greater blow at Assad by announcing oil sanctions. Petroleum reportedly provides about 30 percent of the Syrian government’s revenue.
Also Thursday, the U.N. human rights office in Geneva said the Assad regime might have committed crimes against humanity in its crackdown on protesters and recommended that the Security Council consider referring the case to the International Criminal Court.
The U.N. said Assad told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon by phone Thursday that the crackdown was over, but residents in the besieged port city of Latakia said government soldiers and tanks remained in the city and that deaths were reported Wednesday and Thursday in other cities, according to news reports.
Syria accused the U.S. of waging “a humanitarian and diplomatic war” against it. Syria’s U.N. ambassador, Bashar Ja’afari, told reporters Thursday that the only aim of the U.S. “war” is to instigate further violence in the country by sending “the wrong message to the terrorist armed groups that they are under American and Western protection.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
