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US slaps Syria with sanctions
AP
Photo
Syrian citizens shopping at Hamidiyah popular market, in Damascus, Syria, on Wednesday May 18, 2011. The Syrian opposition called for a general strike Wednesday to protest the regime but the appeal seemed to go largely unheeded. Schools, shops and other businesses were open in the capital, Damascus, and other Syrian cities amid a tight security presence. Syria's president said the country's security forces have made mistakes during the uprising against his regime, blaming poorly trained police officers at least in part for a crackdown that has killed more than 850 people over the past two months.
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The United States slapped sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad and six senior Syrian officials for human-rights abuses over their brutal crackdown on anti-government demonstrations, for the first time personally penalizing the Syrian leader for actions of his security forces.
The White House announced the sanctions Wednesday, a day before President Barack Obama delivers a major speech on the uprisings throughout the Arab world. The speech is expected to include prominent mentions of Syria.
The Obama administration had pinned hopes on Assad, seen until recent months as a pragmatist and potential reformer who could buck Iranian influence and help broker an eventual Arab peace deal with Israel.
But U.S. officials said Assad’s increasingly brutal crackdown left them little choice but to abandon the effort to woo Assad and to stop exempting him from the same sort of sanctions already applied to Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi.
In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama said he issued the new sanctions order as a response to the Syrian government’s “continuous escalation of violence against the people of Syria.”
Obama cited “attacks on protesters, arrests and harassment of protesters and political activists, and repression of democratic change, overseen and executed by numerous elements of the Syrian government.”
The sanctions will freeze any assets Assad and the six Syrian government officials have in U.S. jurisdiction and make it illegal for Americans to do business with them. The U.S. had imposed similar sanctions on two of Assad’s relatives and another top Syrian official last month.