Europeans want to sanction Assad

BERLIN, May 19 (UPI) -- Germany wants the European Union to follow Washington's course of imposing sanctions that directly target Syrian President Bashar Assad.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Wednesday in Berlin that the sanctions against Syria, imposed by the European Union last week, should just be a first step.

Because of the ongoing violence against demonstrators, "we feel it's necessary and unavoidable that President Assad will be directly targeted in a next round of sanctions," Westerwelle said.

Britain and France have during the past days also called for EU sanctions against Assad and his inner circle.

The EU foreign ministers should agree to more sanctions at their next summit on May 23, Westerwelle added. Germany will also urge the U.N. Security Council to discuss Syria, he said.

His comments came on the same day as U.S. President Barack Obama imposed sanctions on Assad and six of his aides for human rights abuses, making him just the third leader after Libya's Moammar Gadhafi and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus to be directly targeted by the United States.

While Assad has no assets in the United States, the sanctions increase the political pressure on the Syrian leader, who had been seen as a potential reformer in the Middle East but is now increasingly isolated.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said it was time for or Assad "to stop his policies of repression and mass arrests," and to "lead a political transition or ... leave," the BBC reports.

Human rights groups say more than 850 people have been killed and thousands arrested in the crackdown on dissidents, who have been taking the streets in several Syrian cities since March. The regime has dispatched the military into the dissident hot spots, with reports that security forces shot dozens of unarmed civilians.

The Syrian government accuses armed criminals of sparking the riots, saying they had killed more than 100 security personnel. In comments to the al-Watan newspaper, Assad admitted that the security services had made mistakes in handling the demonstrations because they were inexperienced.

Obama was due to hold a major speech Thursday on the uprisings in North Africa in the Middle East, which have led to regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt and a NATO-led military campaign to protect civilians in Libya.