Syrian Gunboats Fire on Coastal City

[CardSharp]

Yes syrians r brave and there r many of our Prophet ( PBUH) sayings about the ppl of shaaam and shaaam ( syria)

InshaAllah they will throw this killer along with his supporters.

TARIQ

Do you forsee an Islamic government replacing Assad?

 

[TARIQ BN ZIYAAD]

Actuallly nobody can forecast a thing. Until now everybody is calling for democracy where everybody can elect it representatives. It was one party state, but suppose if the killing is going on, then i m sure the islamists r gonna benefit from the situation. To avoid blood bath and backlash, this regime has to go as soon as possible.

Right now i m llistening to aljazeerah there is a strong warning from the FM OF TURKY to syrian govt.

TARIQ

 

[500]

Syria unrest: Palestinian refugees flee camp, says UN

Thousands of Palestinian refugees are fleeing a camp in the Syrian port of Latakia which is being shelled by government troops, a UN agency says.

A spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works agency (Unrwa) told the BBC that more than 5,000 of the 10,000 refugees were on the move.

He said at least four people had died, urging immediate access to the site.

Some 30 people have reportedly died in Latakia in a three-day military attack. Syria says it is tackling gangs.

On Monday, there were also reports of a clampdown in the capital Damascus, with people being arrested randomly in the Jobar district.

BBC News - Syria unrest: Palestinian refugees flee camp, says UN

These Syrians protesters are brave as hell. Best of luck to hem.

Yeah one needs iron balls to protest in Syria.

 

[Unbeliever]

Obama Administration Calls for Syrian President to Step Down
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON —President Obama and the leaders of Germany, Britain, France and Canada called Thursday for Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to give up power. The choreographed move follows months of popular protests and deadly reprisals in Syria.

Mr. Obama also ordered the freezing of all Syrian assets within American jurisdiction, barred American citizens from having any business dealings with the Syrian government and called on other countries to impose their own sanctions.

It was Mr. Obama’s first explicit call for Mr. Assad to resign. It came after weeks of divisions within the administration on how to proceed, and criticism from outside that the United States and other nations had responded too tepidly to the violent crackdown on the popular protests that have swept Syrian cities since March.

“We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way,” Mr. Obama said in a written statement released by the White House on Thursday morning, after coordination with allies in Europe and elsewhere, including nations that have far closer economic and diplomatic ties with Syria than the United States does. “He has not led,” Mr. Obama said of Mr. Assad. “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

Almost simultaneously, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany issued a joint statement urging Mr. Assad “to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and the unity of its people.” Canada made a similar appeal.

The United Nations human rights office in Geneva reported on Thursday that Syrian government forces may have committed crimes against humanity by carrying out summary executions, torturing prisoners and harming children. The office recommended that the Security Council consider referring Syria to the International Criminal Court for prosecution of alleged atrocities. In New York, the United Nations Security Council met for several hours Thursday afternoon to consider making the referral, and Western diplomats afterward said they would be working on a resolution in the coming days, citing the possibility of an arms embargo, asset freezes and travel bans as examples of the kinds of measures that could be pursued.

The growing condemnation reflected international frustration with Mr. Assad’s government, which has ignored repeated calls to halt violence against protesters, including those from countries like Turkey that have relatively close relations with Damascus.

Mr. Assad told the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, on Wednesday that the crackdown had in fact ended, an assertion repeated Thursday by Syria’s representative to the United Nations, who said that the United States was trying to use the Security Council as an "instrument" to try to instigate further instability.

But activists within Syria said the violence continued overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning, with two people reported killed in the flashpoint city of Homs after a night prayer, held only during the month of Ramadan, when Muslims fast from dawn to sunset.

“Nothing has changed yet,” a resident in Homs who did not want to be identified by name said in a telephone interview. “Last night was very violent. They shot at protesters and carried out raids just like any other previous day.”

Syrian opposition figures welcomed Washington’s call for Mr. Assad to step down. “The U.S. position will increase Mr. Assad’s isolation,” said Samir Nachar, a prominent opposition figure. “It is a very positive step that the Syrians have been waiting for for a long time and we should soon start seeing changes within the leadership.”

Others were more cautious, warning that the American position might add to the problem, given the state of the Syrian opposition which has yet to organize its ranks and the lack of any plan that could be put into effect should Mr. Assad leave office.

The United Nations report, overseen by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kyung-wha Kang, accused Syria of grossly violating its citizens’ rights and carrying out “numerous summary executions, including 353 named victims.” It also said that members of the security forces “posed as civilians in order to cause unrest and portray and inaccurate picture of events.”

It remains to be seen how much impact Thursday’s chorus of criticism and actions will have on the Syrian government. Diplomatically, Syria is now more isolated than at any other time in the four decades that the country has been led by Mr. Assad or by his father. Obama administration officials acknowledged, though, that American sanctions alone would have little effect.

“No outside power can or should impose this transition,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in remarks at the State Department following Mr. Obama’s statement. “It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders, in a democratic system based on the rule of law and dedicated to protecting the rights of all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sect or gender.”

With Syria’s opposition, both inside and outside the country, barely organized and under constant harassment from the government, there is no obvious path to a transfer of power, even if Mr. Assad’s grip weakens significantly. “Nothing about this is going to be easy,” a senior administration official said, adding that it was impossible to predict how long Mr. Assad’s government would survive.

Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton and their aides called on other countries to tighten economic sanctions. The measures Mr. Obama ordered today took aim at Syria’s oil and petroleum exports in particular. Syria is a relative small energy producer, exporting only 148,000 barrels of oil a day, almost all of it to European nations, according to the United States Department of Energy.

Mr. Cameron, Mr. Sarkozy and Ms. Merkel said in their statement that they would be “actively supporting” additional sanctions imposed through the European Union, but no new ones were announced Thursday. Like the United States, the European Union has imposed sanctions on Mr. Assad and dozens of other security officials and businessmen in Syria. The union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said the union was discussing how to broaden its sanctions.

The violence, along with Syria’s official defiance, “shows that the Syrian regime is unwilling to change,” Ms. Ashton said in a statement. “The president’s promises of reform have lost all credibility, as reforms cannot succeed under permanent repression.”

Inside Syria, activists said that armed troops carried out raids and arrested hundreds of people in several areas on Thursday, including the restive city of Hama, the scene of a brutal crackdown more than two weeks ago that left at least 200 people dead, as well as Latakia on the Mediterranean coast and in Damascus.

Residents also said that military troops and armed men known as shabeeha remained visible in Hama and in Deir al-Zour, a city in the east.

Before Mr. Obama and the other leaders issue their call, there were days of intense diplomatic activity aimed at ending the violence, variously involving Syrian, Turkish, American and other officials. The Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, spent six hours last week with Mr. Assad, appealing to him to end the crackdown, one of the bloodiest in any of the Arab countries with popular uprisings this year. Mr. Assad rebuffed the appeal and dismissed the protesters as militant Islamists and terrorists.

In Washington, the call for Mr. Assad to step down was debated for weeks. Officials said it was delayed to give the Turks more time for diplomatic efforts. As recently as last weekend, the Turkish government was still asking that it be held off for a week or two, but President Obama wanted to go ahead, and pressed the point in phone conversations with the leaders of Turkey, France, Germany and Britain, according to an administration official who described the high-level consultations.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton suggested that an American call for a new leader would have little effect, given the longstanding tensions between the two countries, but that others in the region might carry more weight in Damascus.

“It’s not going to be any news if the United States says Assad needs to go,” Mrs. Clinton said at the National Defense University in Washington. “O.K. Fine. What’s next? If Turkey says it, if King Abdullah says it, if other people say it, there is no way the Assad regime can ignore it.”

Tellingly, though, Turkey did not join in the diplomatic chorus on Thursday in calling for Mr. Assad to leave power.

Reporting was contributed by Mark Landler and Brian Knowlton from Washington; Nada Bakri from Beirut, Lebanon; Alan Cowell from Paris and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/middleeast/19diplo.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

 

[NeutralCitizen]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/19/world/middleeast/19diplo.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

Noting more then Bloated words Assad will not leave.

 

[KKNDmx]

I have one question: Why is Libya being bombed to kingdom come while Syria is being spared?? Why the double standard here? people at UN should work harder

 

[NeutralCitizen]

I have one question: Why is Libya being bombed to kingdom come while Syria is being spared?? Why the double standard here? people at UN should work harder

Syria has ties to China, Russia and India, China and Russia both stated they would veto any attempt on Syria, + Syria doesn't have that much Oil.

 

[CardSharp]

Syria has ties to China, Russia and India, China and Russia both stated they would veto any attempt on Syria, + Syria doesn't have that much Oil.

Well actually I think the crucial difference here is that the US and NATO doesn't have Arab league support. Gaddafi was an outsider who despised by the other Arabs, while Assad is definitely one of their own.

 

[TARIQ BN ZIYAAD]

Both bashar and qadhafi r crazy ppl and their time to leave have come.

TARIQ

 

[below_freezing]

Well actually I think the crucial difference here is that the US and NATO doesn't have Arab league support. Gaddafi was an outsider who despised by the other Arabs, while Assad is definitely one of their own.

They also know that Gaddafi can't strike back while Syria can, and Gaddafi saw himself as a Libyan first, African second, Muslim third and a far last, Arab.

 

[NeutralCitizen]

Well actually I think the crucial difference here is that the US and NATO doesn't have Arab league support. Gaddafi was an outsider who despised by the other Arabs, while Assad is definitely one of their own.

Yes Arabs betrayed Gaddafi because he favored Africa over the Middle no Surprise.

 

[CardSharp]

Yes Arabs betrayed Gaddafi because he favored Africa over the Middle no Surprise.

They also know that Gaddafi can't strike back while Syria can, and Gaddafi saw himself as a Libyan first, African second, Muslim third and a far last, Arab.

Think the timeline went, he tried to be an Arab, the others didn't like him, then he tried being an Africanist.

 

[Hussein]

Think the timeline went, he tried to be an Arab, the others didn't like him, then he tried being an Africanist.

Hi cardshap
Indeed his country is strategically placed and he was doing double politics:
both africanist and arab
he was smart for this matter