Washington: United States President Barack Obama on Tuesday said that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has missed many chances for reform, denouncing an attack on the US Embassy in Damascus.
“He has missed opportunity after opportunity to present a genuine reform agenda,” Obama informed CBS television.
Syria’s ties with America and France have plummeted four months into a revolt against Assad, after pro-regime crowds attacked the embassies of the United States and France on Monday.
“We have sent a clear message that nobody can be messing with our embassy and that we will take whatever actions necessary in order to protect our embassy,” Obama added.
“More broadly, I think that increasingly you are seeing President Assad lose legitimacy in the eyes of his people,” Obama said.
Washington had made it clear “that what we have seen on the part of the Syrian regime has been an unacceptable degree of brutality directed at its people,” the US president said.
“We have been working at an international level to make sure we keep the pressure up to see if we can bring some real change in Syria,” Obama stressed.
In Syria, about 200 delegates on Tuesday ended talks on reform boycotted by the opposition pledging to work with parties inside and outside the country to prepare a “national dialogue conference as soon as possible”.
“Dialogue is the only way to halt the crisis,” they said in a final statement, adding the opposition was an “integral part” of Syria’s political life.
Independent MPs and members of Assad’s Baath party, which has been in power since 1963, took part in the talks, but opposition figures boycotted in protest over the deadly crackdown.
Human rights organisations said that at least 1,300 civilians have been killed and 12,000 arrested since mid-March.
