america.gov, Washington, 26 April 2011— In response to the Syrian government’s continued violent crackdown against demonstrators, the Obama administration says it is considering implementing sanctions that would target members of Syria’s leadership.
The State Department’s director of policy planning, Jacob Sullivan, speaking to reporters in Washington April 26, said the United States is “considering a range of options, including targeted sanctions” against the Syrian government.
The measures are currently “under consideration,” Sullivan said, and their purpose would be to “send a clear message to the targets of the sanctions and to leave them with a clear choice and to make them understand that there are … specific costs” for their actions.
Sullivan condemned the Syrian government’s attacks upon civilians, arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture in response to the civil unrest in the country. President Bashar Assad “has taken actions which are completely inconsistent with the actions of a responsible leader. They are totally unacceptable,” Sullivan said.
Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah estimated April 26 that pro-government security forces had killed 400 Syrian civilians since protests began in mid-March, and have arrested up to 500 people in the past two days as part of a crackdown against popular demonstrations.
The United States is urging Syria to “take steps to respond to the aspirations of its people and to respect their rights,” and Sullivan said that the Syrian people are ultimately the ones that must decide who will lead them.
In its messages to the Assad regime, the Obama administration consistently has condemned the regime’s “brutal violence” against civilians and has told it that the Syrian peoples’ desires for free expression, the right to free assembly and the ability to freely choose their leaders “has to be heard,” Sullivan said.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said April 25 that the United States is reviewing “a range of policy options” in reaction to what he described as “appalling violence.”
“The United States and this administration is doing everything it can, including discussions with allies, with the United Nations, leaders and governments in the region, to make clear its policy position and to make clear to the Syrian government that we believe it needs to cease and desist from the violence it’s been perpetrating against its own citizens,” he said.
Carney noted that since 2003, Syria has been subject to “a fairly aggressive regime of sanctions” that were levied under the Syria Accountability Act, and U.S. policymakers are now “looking at other means to increase the pressure on the regime and the Syrian government in a targeted way” in addition to the 2003 sanctions.
“Sanctions can put pressure on governments and regimes to change their behavior, and I think that would be obviously the goal of this,” Carney said.