Post date: Feb 06, 2012 9:59:44 PM
WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (FEBRUARY 6, 2012) (4:3) (STATE TV - The United States closed its embassy in Damascus on Monday (February 6) as President Barack Obama vowed to ratchet up pressure on Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to step down, even as world powers remained divided over how to end the crisis.
At a news briefing, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland says the U.S. will have to look to measures outside of the U.N. to pressure Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to step down. Russia and China cast a double veto in the Security Council on Saturday, effectively blocking U.N. action.
Washington said it was pulling all of its remaining diplomats out of Syria just two days after Western countries failed to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have backed an Arab League call for Assad to leave power.
"We had been working for many weeks with Syrian officials to try to control access around our embassy facility. We were not able to come to appropriate arrangements there, so the decision was made to suspend operations," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
The U.S. decision, which was foreshadowed by the State Department last month, came as Washington and its allies scrambled to find a new strategy to rally the international community to force Assad to end his bloody, 11-month-old crackdown on the opposition.
But Washington's diplomatic options are limited after Russia and China cast a double veto in the Security Council on Saturday (February 4), effectively blocking U.N. action.
"We are going to have to take measures outside the U.N. to strengthen and deepen and broaden the international community of pressure on Assad. So, to continue his diplomatic isolation, to work with as many countries as we can, to increase both regional sanctions and unilateral, national sanctions on the Assad regime, to pressure those countries that are still trading with him and particularly that are trading weapons, or otherwise fueling his war machine to stop," Nuland told reporters in a briefing at the State Department.
Russia fought back against blistering criticism from the West for vetoing the resolution on Saturday. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due in Damascus on Tuesday (February 7).
"Our hope and expectation is that Foreign Minister Lavrov will use this opportunity to make absolutely clear to the Assad regime how isolated it is and to encourage Assad and his people to make use of the Arab League plan and provide for a transition," Nuland said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had vowed on Sunday that Washington would work "with friends of a Democratic Syria around the world," raising the prospects of forging a coalition of like-minded countries to help Assad's political opposition.
But Clinton did not give further details which nations might band together or precisely what they might do.