After tiptoeing toward demanding the ouster of Bashar al-Assad over the past several months, United States President Barack Obama on Thursday finally jumped over the line with his first explicit call for the Syrian president to resign.
"The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside."
Obama's statement was followed by the imposition of sweeping economic sanctions, including a freeze on all Syrian state assets
under US jurisdiction and a total ban on US companies and citizens conducting any business with Damascus.
Because US commercial relations with Syria are negligible, however, administration officials said they hoped Washington's latest steps would be replicated by the European Union (EU), whose economic ties with Damascus - particularly in the energy field - are far more significant, when its senior diplomatic officials meet in Brussels on Friday.
