RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Syrian regime's criminal crackdown: 10,000 dead, more than 44,000 refugees, 1.5 million in need of humanitarian aid  Thu Apr 19, 2012 4:51 am | |
| International sanctions aimed at the Syrian government have cut its financial reserves in half and pressure must be maintained on Damascus to stop its bloody crackdown on opponents despite a shaky five-day ceasefire, the French Foreign Minister, Alain Juppe, says.
The financial pressure, including an oil embargo and sanctions on the Central Bank, is damaging Syria's ability ''to finance and arm militias, the lethal shabiha death squads'', Mr Juppe told a gathering of 57 nations in Paris on Tuesday. He said the pressure was hurting those around what he called ''the ruling clan'' of the Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.
Members of the so-called Friends of Syria group voted to tighten sanctions on Syria as Russia accused Persian Gulf nations of arming opposition fighters.
Advertisement: Story continues below
The group is openly supporting the rebels with non-lethal assistance, such as communications equipment. It is also weighing gestures to further cast Mr Assad's regime as a pariah, including the expulsion of Syria's ambassadors, according to European diplomats who aren't authorised to speak to the media.
While the daily death toll has dropped, Mr Assad has not lived up to the terms of the UN-backed peace plan, which include a pullback of his forces and steps towards democratic reforms.
Even as the first UN monitors arrived in Syria, government tanks continued attacking Homs and other areas, Mark Toner, a US State Department spokesman, said.
The Syrian government said its enemies were responsible for subverting the ceasefire.
An advance team of six UN observers worked on how to monitor the ceasefire as they waited for 24 more observers to arrive.
The observers ''will start with setting up operating headquarters and reaching out to the Syrian government and the opposition forces so that both sides fully understand'' their role, said Ahmad Fawzi, a spokesman for the UN special envoy Kofi Annan.
Qatar's Prime Minister, after finishing an Arab League meeting yesterday with Mr Annan, said the agreement made little difference. ''We are fearful that the Syrian regime is playing for time,'' Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim Bin Al Thani said. ''We hope to be wrong but until now we have not felt substantive change in the way the Syrian government has been dealing with this dossier.''
The Paris conference is intended to co-ordinate and strengthen existing sanctions on the Syrian government, according to French diplomats, as a follow-up to meetings of the Friends of Syria in Tunis and Istanbul.
It is chaired by France, the EU's foreign service and Morocco, which represents Arab countries on the UN Security Council. Two Arab League nations, Syria's neighbours Iraq and Lebanon, did not attend.
The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is expected in Paris today after NATO meetings in Brussels for a higher-level discussion of Syria, French diplomats said.
In his speech, Mr Juppe listed the consequences: nearly 10,000 dead, more than 44,000 refugees, 1.5 million Syrians in need of humanitarian aid. He called it ''the sad toll of the Syrian regime's criminal crackdown''.
However, in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, accused unspecified countries and ''external forces'' of trying to undermine the Security Council and Mr Annan's diplomacy.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/sanctions-taking-toll-on-syria-say-french-20120418-1x7pw.html#ixzz1sTTpmeZQ
|
|
