The European Union decided to impose sanctions on Syrian oil exports today, piling more pressure on president Bashar al-Assad, whose security forces, activists said, shot dead six more protesters.
"The sanctions have been agreed," an official said in the Polish resort of Sopot where EU foreign ministers met to set out their response to Dr Assad's military crackdown on five months of protests against his 11-year rule.
"President Assad is carrying out massacres in his own country," Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said. "The whole international community is urging him to relinquish power."
Oil trading accounts for more than a quarter of Syria's income, most of which comes from exports to France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
As the EU tightened the economic screw on Dr Assad, demonstrations broke out in several parts of Syria, mainly in rural regions because of a heavy army presence in urban areas, activists and residents said.
They reported that at least six protesters were killed when security forces fired on crowds in the Damascus suburbs of Irbin and Hamouriya, the eastern tribal province of Deir al-Zor and in rural areas of Homs province.
On Friday, which has emerged as the main day for protests in the Arab world, rallies were being held under the banner “Death Rather Than Humiliation”.
The United States and Britain called for a tougher stance over Syria’s crackdown on protesters yesterday, demanding new international sanctions on president Bashar al-Assad and his regime.
In a round of talks on the sidelines of a Paris summit on Libya, the US, Britain and France discussed plans to escalate international action aimed at halting the violence.
“President Assad’s brutality against unarmed citizens has outraged the region, the world and most importantly the Syrian people themselves,” US
Syria's official Sana news agency said several members of the security forces were wounded when their bases in Irbin and Hamouriya came under attack.
Syria has expelled most foreign media, making it difficult to verify accounts of the unrest in which one prominent Syria rights group says nearly 2,000 civilians, as well as 463 soldiers and police, have been killed.
"Oh mother, Bashar is in his last days," chanted a crowd in the town of Kfar Nubbul in northern Idlib province, carrying a banner that compared the modest international response to Syria's uprising compared to interventions in major oil states. "We don't have oil like Iraq or Libya, don't we deserve to live?" it said.
The EU has already banned Europeans from doing business with dozens of Syrian officials, government institutions and military-linked firms it says are tied to the violent repression of the protests. Four people and three entities were added to that sanctions list today, the EU official said.
Today's steps are the first time the EU will target Syrian industry but analysts say the sanctions, which do not go as far as the investment ban imposed by the United States last month, may have only a limited impact on Dr Assad's access to funds.
While EU sanctions will disrupt a major source of foreign currency for Syria, most of whose oil exports go to Europe, Damascus should be able to find new markets in Asia for its crude, even if it has to offer discounts and may take time to agree contracts.
France said it was pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that sets up United Nations sanctions against Syria - something which veto-wielding council members Russia and China have so far resisted.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton urged European and other countries yesterday to impose more sanctions on Mr Assad's government, saying more pressure was needed to make him quit.
No Middle Eastern country has followed the US and EU lead in calling for Dr Assad to stand aside, and British prime minister David Cameron said today Arab nations were less willing to act than they were in the case of Libya.
But he said that during conversations with Arab leaders at a meeting in France to discuss Libya after Muammar Gadafy's fall, he detected a hardening line against Dr Assad. "I think they are toughening their stance because they realise that what he is doing is appalling," Mr Cameron told the BBC. "They realise that he had his chance to demonstrate he was in favour of reform and he has completely failed to do that."
Dr Assad (45) inherited power from his father and retains the loyalty of the core of his armed forces, whose commanders are mostly from his own Alawite minority.
Last month he sent the army into several cities to crush dissent. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 473 people were killed, 360 civilians and 113 from the security forces.
Despite the repression, demonstrators have been encouraged by Col Gadafy's fall and the rising international pressure on Syria.
Reuters