/ 29 April 2011

EU mulls sanctions against Syria

Eu Mulls Sanctions Against Syria

European Union states are discussing imposing sanctions on Syria if the regime continues its violent suppression of pro-democracy protests.

William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, said Damascus faced “a fork in the road” as opposition activists reported continuing government attacks in the southern town of Deraa and mass arrests and tanks in areas that included Douma near the capital and Baniyas on the coast.

In Rome, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi issued a joint call for an end to violence against the demonstrators. Sarkozy described the situation as “unacceptable” but also made it clear that he was not contemplating direct intervention of the sort he championed against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

“We are not going to intervene everywhere in the world and not all situations are necessarily the same,” Sarkozy said.

Possible EU sanctions would probably include travel bans and asset freezes targeting members of President Bashar al-Assad’s family and other senior regime figures, to be coordinated with punitive measures being prepared by the Obama administration in the United States.

However, the difficulties of concerted international action were illustrated when members of the UN Security Council debated a statement criticising Syria as Russian diplomats sought to water down a European draft. The statement would not have the legal force or direct impact of earlier resolutions against Libya.

Diplomats said the Syrian government had more defenders on the international stage and, “having endured years of US sanctions already”, was less vulnerable to new pressure.

The Syrian human rights organisation, Sawasiah, said at least 400 civilians had been killed during a month of protests. It said 500 people had been arrested in the past few days, after the abrogation of the country’s decades-old emergency law — one of several concessions by Assad widely dismissed as too little too late.

Despite an attempted media blackout, reports from Syria described more troops, snipers and armoured vehicles in Deraa. Al-Jazeera Arabic quoted residents as saying shelling had killed 20 people, including women and children.

Water, electricity and phone lines had all been cut, but information was filtering out via locals using Jordanian mobile phones. Amnesty International said at least 23 people had been killed by tank fire. “Sometimes you hear a burst of heavy machine-gun fire coming in all directions as though just to scare people,” one resident said.

The central city of Homs was also described by opposition sources as being “under siege”, as was the northern town of Baniyas, where Sunnis live in the heart of an area dominated by the minority Alawite sect, to which the Assad family belongs. Violence peaked last weekend, with 150 people killed in just three days.

Opposition supporters abroad said this week that there were now fewer videos emerging of the violence, reflecting the arrest of activists and a more effective security crackdown. Arab media also highlighted claims of defections from the Syrian army.

Views of the situation have hardened since last Friday’s violence and the storming of Deraa on Monday showed that Assad had decided to use brute force, not further reforms, to deal with the protests. But for all the talk of sanctions the emphasis in Europe was still on offering Damascus an opportunity to change its behaviour. Hague said he had been in regular contact with the Turkish government over Syria. Turkey is seen as the most important intermediary in contacts with Damascus.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan telephoned Assad to urge “restraint”, while Turkey’s ambassador to Syria expressed his country’s “deep concern and sorrow over the loss of many lives” in a meeting with Syrian Prime Minister Adel Safar. —