CAIRO — In his first public speech since June, Syrian President Bashar Assad showed no signs Tuesday that he was willing to compromise on his crackdown on anti-government protesters, promising an “iron hand” even as his country veers dangerously close to civil war after 10 months of protests and violence.
In a nearly two-hour speech, Assad rejected calls for his resignation, and he stuck to familiar themes, painting protesters as terrorists whose actions are only delaying the implementation of long-promised reforms and blaming his regime’s problems on Western conspiracies and Arab betrayals.
He voiced particular scorn for the Arab League, which has suspended Syria’s membership and dispatched monitors to investigate the crisis. Assad called the league a weak and ineffective body that’s done little to further Arab causes, mocking its “failure” to stop the war in Iraq or feed starving Somalis.
After Assad spoke, the Kuwait state news agency KUNA reported that two Kuwaiti army officers were injured when “unknown protesters” attacked a team of Arab League monitors in Syria’s northern city of Latakia. Amateur videos posted online purport to show pro-Assad gangs destroying a marked SUV said to belong to the monitors.
Such highly public discord signals just how isolated Assad has become in the past year, as international pressure has mounted against his lethal campaign to crush the protest movement. Army defectors and opposition members are increasingly turning their weapons on government targets.
The regime, in turn, has intensified its deadly military assault, and a U.N. official said Tuesday that about 400 people have been killed in the past three weeks, on top of an earlier U.N. estimate of more than 5,000 dead since March.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
