#Syrian Council Says #Assad Can’t Shirk Responsibility for Deaths |

Syrian Council Says Assad Can’t Shirk Responsibility for Deaths |

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By Massoud A. Derhally

Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) — Syria’s opposition said Bashar al- Assad can’t escape responsibility for the killing of protesters and should quit to spare the country further bloodshed.

The president, who denied in an ABC News interview that he gave orders for a violent crackdown, “has forgotten that he’s the commander-in-chief of the armed forces,” said Samir Nashar, a member of the executive bureau of the Syrian National Council. “It’s strange that a leader of a nation says he doesn’t know what’s taking place. If that is the case, then let him step down and relieve the country and the people.”

Assad told ABC that he doesn’t “own” the country’s security forces, dismissed United Nations estimates that at least 4,000 people have died since unrest began in March, and attributed violence against protesters to “mistakes committed by some officials” rather than a policy of violent repression....International Sanctions

The Arab League said this week that it will maintain economic sanctions on Syria, rebuffing a demand by Assad’s government to remove the measures as one of several conditions for admitting Arab monitors. The U.S. and European Union have also imposed sanctions. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with the Syrian National Council in Geneva on Dec. 6.

Assad told ABC that he’s not concerned by sanctions, which he said haven’t isolated Syria. He asked for the UN to send “concrete evidence” to support allegations that Syria has committed war crimes, which he called a “distortion of reality.”

The question of Assad’s personal role in the Syrian decision-making system is less important than that system’s use of “a level of brutality that is unacceptable for the whole world,” said Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. [ read more at link ]