Wednesday, April 27, 2011

U.S. Prepares to Impose Sanctions on Syria
With tanks now patrolling the streets of a restive Syrian city, the Obama administration is preparing to take its first concrete steps against President Bashar Assad and his top lieutenants -- the imposition of sanctions for an increasingly bloody crackdown on demonstrators.
The regime in Damascus escalated the violence Monday, ordering army tanks and troops into action against protesters in the southern city of Dara. The move followed a tumultuous weekend in which Syrian security forces gunned down an estimated 120 pro-democracy protesters. More than 300 people have died since the uprising erupted five weeks ago.
Obama administration officials said they are readying orders that would freeze U.S. assets of senior Syrian officials and deny them permission to travel in the United States.
U.S. sanctions are unlikely to produce a dramatic effect because Syrian officials apparently own few U.S. assets. But the move signaled a notable shift by the Obama administration, which has worked hard to build better relations with Damascus, a regime it considers a strategic key for security in the Middle East.
European officials said they also are considering steps against Assad's regime. Syrian officials maintain far larger investments in Europe than in the U.S., so economic sanctions or travel bans there would have a more direct effect.
The Obama administration hopes U.S. sanctions will help build pressure on its European allies, especially France and Britain, to follow suit. Officials in Washington have consulted closely with counterparts in London and Paris on how best to persuade Assad to show restraint.
Moves by British and French officials against Syria could be particularly important. France, the former colonial power, retains strong cultural and economic relations with Damascus. Assad lived for a number of years in Britain and may have financial assets there.
David Schenker, a former Middle East advisor at the Pentagon, said steps to isolate Syria, especially by European countries, would sting.
Even though he took over from his father a decade ago and has maintained Syria's authoritarian system, Assad has cherished the idea that he retains "an international legitimacy and acceptability," said Schenker, now an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.
In Syria, heavy-caliber gunfire crackled at dawn Monday as tanks rolled into Dara, a hot spot in the uprising. Amateur videos posted online appeared to show bodies in the streets as protesters came under fire from the tanks' gunners and the snipers on nearby roofs.
One report by activists said more than 25 people were killed "but no one could get close to them because of the brutal shooting." The activists said that a military force of between 4,000 and 5,000 men marched into Dara along with up to a dozen tanks.
Several military officers in Dara province told The Times that they had orders to shoot any protester, adding that many soldiers were afraid to resist and that failing to carry out orders was tantamount to a death sentence.
"We have orders to open fire," said one of the officers, speaking on condition of anonymity because of concerns for his safety. "We are afraid to carry them out because there will be more killing. But if we don't, someone will kill us."
Syrian activists in touch with witnesses in Dara reported that at least five military officers, including two with the rank of captain, and nine soldiers refused to carry out orders.
In one video posted online, protesters are seen throwing a rock at an oncoming tank and milling about nearby, as if they were daring soldiers to open fire on them.
It was impossible to confirm reports from Dara because the city was effectively cut off before the army launched its raid. Syrian authorities cut phone service, disconnected electrical power and blocked roads to the farming hub. Most foreign journalists have been barred from the country.
State media in Jordan reported that Syria also had sealed the border near Dara, where the arrest and alleged torture of a group of teenagers accused of writing political graffiti sparked the unrest now gripping the country.
The United Nations' human rights chief, Navi Pillay, demanded a halt to the use of excessive force. "The killings must stop immediately," she said in a news release.
The regime's ratcheting up of pressure was not limited to Dara. At least 13 people had been killed since Sunday in the coastal city of Jableh, activists said. Scores of people were reported arrested in the Damascus suburb of Duma. Gunfire was reported in Moadamyeh, another suburb.
In Washington, the State Department advised Americans to leave Syria as soon as possible. It ordered some nonessential U.S. Embassy staff and the families of all embassy personnel to leave, but said the embassy would remain open.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said the Obama administration "is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown in Syria and to make clear that this behavior is unacceptable."
Syria has been ineligible for U.S. aid and most trade under a variety of earlier sanctions, some imposed because of Syria's support for Hezbollah and Hamas, which Washington regards as terrorist organizations. But Carney said the administration "is looking at other means to increase the pressure on the regime."
A U.S. official said targeted sanctions probably would be imposed in the next several weeks.
Though President Obama has sharpened his denunciations of Syria, U.S. officials have moved cautiously. They believe they have limited leverage against the regime, and some allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, warn that Assad's fall could spark a bloodbath or produce a successor regime that is even less savory.
As a result, U.S. officials who abandoned autocrats facing popular uprisings this spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, have not totally given up on Assad.
A White House spokesman said Syrian authorities' relationship with the United States "will be determined by their actions."
Carney said the U.S. ambassador, Robert Ford, is staying in Damascus, despite calls from critics in the U.S. who have urged the White House to withdraw him as a statement of displeasure.

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