Syrian president promises reform
Source: Agencies |
June 21, 2011, Tuesday
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SYRIA'S embattled president said yesterday his government would consider political reforms, including ending his Baath Party's monopoly on power, but gave no sign he might step down, a key demand of nationwide protests.
Bashar Assad's 70-minute, televised address was only his third public speech since the uprising began in March.
"Saboteurs" were trying to exploit legitimate demands for reform, he said.
"What is happening today has nothing to do with reform. It has to do with vandalism," Assad told supporters at Damascus University, where he stood before red, white and black Syrian flags. "There can be no development without stability, and no reform through vandalism."
But he also announced that a "national dialogue" would start soon and he was forming a committee to study constitutional amendments, including one that would open the way for the formation of political parties other than the ruling Baath Party.
He said a package of reforms was to be released by September or the end of the year at the latest.
Assad, 45, who inherited power in 2000 after his father's death, has made a series of overtures to try to ease the growing outrage, lifting the decades-old emergency laws that give the government a free hand to arrest people without charge and granting Syrian nationality to thousands of Kurds, a long-ostracized minority.
But the overtures did nothing to sap the movement's momentum. Protesters dismissed them as either symbolic or coming far too late.
In yesterday's speech, Assad warned that the country's economy will take a beating unless the unrest ends - a message aimed at his supporters in the business community and prosperous merchant classes.
"The most dangerous thing we face in the coming period is the weakness or the collapse of the Syrian economy," he said.
"We want the people to back reforms but we must isolate true reformers from saboteurs," he said.
Yesterday, the government tried to back up its claim that criminals were behind the unrest by taking journalists and foreign diplomats on a trip to a northern town where authorities said armed groups had killed 120 security personnel two weeks before.
The trip to Jisr al-Shughour in the restive Idlib province near the border with Turkey included 70 Western and Arab diplomats, including US Ambassador Robert Ford.
Major General Riad Haddad, head of the Syrian military's political department, said that the military will continue to pursue gunmen "in every village where they are found, even near the Turkish border."
Bashar Assad's 70-minute, televised address was only his third public speech since the uprising began in March.
"Saboteurs" were trying to exploit legitimate demands for reform, he said.
"What is happening today has nothing to do with reform. It has to do with vandalism," Assad told supporters at Damascus University, where he stood before red, white and black Syrian flags. "There can be no development without stability, and no reform through vandalism."
But he also announced that a "national dialogue" would start soon and he was forming a committee to study constitutional amendments, including one that would open the way for the formation of political parties other than the ruling Baath Party.
He said a package of reforms was to be released by September or the end of the year at the latest.
Assad, 45, who inherited power in 2000 after his father's death, has made a series of overtures to try to ease the growing outrage, lifting the decades-old emergency laws that give the government a free hand to arrest people without charge and granting Syrian nationality to thousands of Kurds, a long-ostracized minority.
But the overtures did nothing to sap the movement's momentum. Protesters dismissed them as either symbolic or coming far too late.
In yesterday's speech, Assad warned that the country's economy will take a beating unless the unrest ends - a message aimed at his supporters in the business community and prosperous merchant classes.
"The most dangerous thing we face in the coming period is the weakness or the collapse of the Syrian economy," he said.
"We want the people to back reforms but we must isolate true reformers from saboteurs," he said.
Yesterday, the government tried to back up its claim that criminals were behind the unrest by taking journalists and foreign diplomats on a trip to a northern town where authorities said armed groups had killed 120 security personnel two weeks before.
The trip to Jisr al-Shughour in the restive Idlib province near the border with Turkey included 70 Western and Arab diplomats, including US Ambassador Robert Ford.
Major General Riad Haddad, head of the Syrian military's political department, said that the military will continue to pursue gunmen "in every village where they are found, even near the Turkish border."
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