AMMAN, (Reuters) – Syrian forces kept up attacks on Hama for a third day, residents said, while U.S. senators called on the Obama administration to impose tough new sanctions on Syria’s energy sector.
Washington also sought to put muscle behind its demand that President Bashar al-Assad halt his lethal crackdown on unarmed protesters.
Human rights campaigners said the assaults by Assad’s forces across Syria on Monday and Tuesday had killed at least 27 civilians, including 13 in Hama, where troops and tanks began an operation to regain control on Sunday.
That brought the total to about 137 dead throughout Syria in the past three days, 93 of them in Hama, according to witnesses, residents and rights campaigners.
The plight of Hama — where thousands were killed in 1982 when security forces crushed an anti-government uprising — has prompted many Syrians to stage solidarity marches since the start of Ramadan.
But Assad’s tough response suggests he will resist calls for democratic change that have swept Syria for the past five months, and much of the Arab world this year.
“The United States should impose crippling sanctions in response to the murder of civilians by troops under the orders of President Assad,” U.S. Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, said in introducing legislation in Washington to target firms that invest in Syria’s energy sector, purchase its oil or sell gasoline. Kirk was joined in sponsoring the bill by Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman, who said it was time to push for “a democratic transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people.”
While the United States weighed its next steps to respond to Assad’s escalating suppression of protests, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with representatives of Syria’s fledgling opposition who said the battered pro-democracy movement badly needed stronger U.S. support.
“We really need to see President Obama addressing the courage of the Syrian people,” said Mohammad Alabdalla, one of the U.S.-based activists who met Clinton.
“We want to hear it loudly and clearly that Assad has to step down.”
Obama and Clinton have said Assad has lost legitimacy, but have stopped short of directly calling on him to leave office as they did Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
The U.N. Security Council negotiated for a second day yesterday over a Western-backed draft resolution condemning Syria, before adjourning until Wednesday.
Diplomats said significant differences remained over the text and it had not been decided whether the end result should be a resolution or a less weighty council statement.
Russia and some other countries are pushing for what they say is a more balanced text that would blame both Syrian authorities and the opposition for the violence, but Western nations say the two sides cannot be equated.
