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Watch for the state run media to start pushing for NATO and US involvement in Syria...per Obama's wishes. Watch for the pictures.
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The U.N. press office says Mr. Ban conveyed the message in a rare telephone call with the Syrian president on Saturday. It says the U.N. Secretary-General also expressed "strong concern" at the mounting violence and death toll in the Syrian uprising in recent days. The U.N. statement says Mr. Assad made a reference in the conversation to a "large number of lives lost" among Syrian security forces and police trying to crush the revolt. It says Mr. Ban responded by condemning violence against both civilians and security forces in Syria.
Mr. Ban's office says he also told Mr. Assad that political reforms promised by the president can become credible only if there is an immediate end to the use of force and mass arrests against opposition activists. Syria had no immediate comment on the phone conversation. In the latest government gesture to the protesters, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said Saturday authorities will hold free parliamentary elections by the end of this year. Opposition activists have dismissed such gestures in the past. The United States says Mr. Assad's security forces have killed about 2,000 people since the uprising began in March.
Other international leaders and governments also increased pressure on Mr. Assad to stop the crackdown. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his government has reached "the end of our patience" with Syria, Turkey's southern neighbor. He said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu will visit Syria on Tuesday to deliver that message in firm manner. Ankara had close ties with Damascus in the years before the revolt began.
In another warning to Syria, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told a German newspaper that he does not believe Mr. Assad has a political future that the Syrian people will support. Gulf Arab states also broke their silence about the uprising. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council issued a statement calling for an immediate end to the violence and for the implementation of reforms. The bloc includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Source
Davutoğlu to visit Syria as Turkey's 'patience running out' over crackdownForeign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu will visit Syria next week to pass critical messages to Syrian authorities, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said, issuing a stark warning that Turkey will not remain a bystander if the five-month crisis in the neighboring country deepens.
“We have been very patient until now, waiting to see whether we can fix this; whether they will listen to what we have been saying,” Erdoğan said in a speech during a iftar dinner in İstanbul on Saturday. “But our patience is running out now.”
(...)
“He will have the necessary talks and convey our messages in a determined manner,” he said. “The ensuing process will be shaped according to the response we get,” he added.
Watch for the state run media to start pushing for NATO and US involvement in Syria...per Obama's wishes. Watch for the pictures.
The White House is expected to lay out the tougher line by the end of this week, possibly on Thursday, according to officials who said the move will be a direct response to Assad's decision to step up the ruthlessness of the crackdown against pro-reform demonstrators by sending tanks into opposition hotbeds. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations.
President Obama and other top U.S. officials previously had said Assad has "lost legitimacy" as a leader and that he either had to spearhead a transition to democracy or get out of the way. They had not specifically demanded that he step down. The new formulation will make it clear that Assad can no longer be a credible reformist and should leave power, the officials said. At the same time, the Treasury Department is expected to expand sanctions against Assad and his inner circle, adding several new companies to a financial blacklist that will freeze any assets they have in U.S. jurisdictions and ban Americans from doing business with them, the officials said. They would not identify the firms to be targeted.
Although the officials would only speak anonymously, the State Department on Tuesday telegraphed the planned shift in policy, saying the administration's two-year attempt to work with Assad, pull Syria out of Iran's orbit and transform it into a regional partner for peace and stability is over. "You can't have any kind of partnership with a regime that does this kind of thing to innocents," spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
The assessment in some ways confirms the obvious, coming as Assad's government presses on with a bloody crackdown on Syria's opposition in the face of mounting international pressure. More than 1,700 people have been killed, according to activists. Yet the bluntness of the message reveals the administration's exasperation with a regime it has tried to reach out to despite a history of tense relations stemming from Syria's close ties to Iran, and the Assad dynasty's support for Shiite militants who have fought Israel and U.S.-backed governments in Lebanon.
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Watch for the state run media to start pushing for NATO and US involvement in Syria...per Obama's wishes. Watch for the pictures.
Watch for the state run media to start pushing for NATO and US involvement in Syria...per Obama's wishes. Watch for the pictures.
I can't see that.
Given Syria's proximity to Israel, any intervention would be seen as serving the agenda of the Zionists.