Western countries united in calling for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down, while the US slapped punitive sanctions on the country’s oil sector, taking the international effort to end the violence against anti-regime protesters to a new level.
As the pro-democracy protests enter their sixth month, at a cost of more than 2,000 lives, the US, Canada and the European Union on Thursday signalled they had finally given up hope that Mr Assad would heed their calls to stop the violence.
“For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside,” President Barack Obama said in a statement, imposing sweeping sanctions on any US investment in Syria’s energy sector, banning US companies from buying Syrian oil and freezing Syrian government assets in the US.