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International pressure on Syria grows

10 August 2011 02:28 (UTC +04:00)

BAku-APA. Syrian President Bashar Assad came under a new barrage of international pressure Tuesday with the Turkish foreign minister urging him to stop killing protesters and U.S. officials saying the Obama administration is preparing to explicitly demand his departure, APA reports quoting Associated Press.

Even as Assad held more than six hours of talks with the visiting Turkish minister, his military unleashed fresh attacks on restive areas, attacks that activists said killed more than 20 people.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said he met the Syrian leader for more than six hours in the capital Damascus and discussed "concrete steps" to end the violent crackdown on protesters. Rights groups say about 1,700 people have been killed since March. An aggressive new military offensive that began with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan a week ago has killed several hundred.

Speaking to reporters on his return to Turkey, Davutoglu said the talks were cordial but did not say what specific steps they had discussed or whether Assad had agreed to consider them.

"We discussed ways to prevent confrontation between the army and the people and tensions like those in Hama in the most open and clear way," Davutoglu said, referring to the Syrian city that has become a flashpoint in the 5-month-old uprising against Assad’s autocratic rule. "The coming days will be important to see if the expectations are being met. We hope that internal peace and calm is achieved and steps for reform are taken."

The Syrian regime has shown no signs of scaling back its crackdown despite increasing diplomatic isolation.

In Washington, officials said the administration will call outright for Assad to give up power and hit the regime with tough new sanctions. The State Department signaled for the first time that American efforts to engage the Syrian government are finally over. The White House is expected to lay out the tougher line by the end of this week, possibly on Thursday.