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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Clinton appeals for all Syrians to abandon Assad

2012-02-26

RABAT, Morocco: Syrians in the military and business who still support President Bashar Assad should turn against him, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday.

The longer you support the regimes campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor. If you refuse, however, to prop up the regime or take part in attacks on your fellow citizens, your countrymen and women will hail you as heroes, Clinton said at a news conference in Morocco as she conveyed a message to those holdouts backers of the embattled leader.

Assad would have the Syrian people believe that it is only terrorists and extremists standing against the regime. But that is wrong, Clinton said. So many Syrians are suffering under this relentless shelling. All Syrians should be working together to seek a better future.

She said in the Moroccan capital that were appealing to members of the Syrian army to put the people of their country first before a family or a political party. And we are pushing hard for a plan that would lead to a political transition.

What kind of political transition is the question. We really don't need another Sunni-dominated, Islamicist regime that plans to suppress the women and minorities, kick out the Westerners, and work to turn the country back a few centuries. Granted it's hard to answer that question now, but the fact that King Abdullah in Saudi-controlled Arabia is happy to fund the rebels should tell us something about where he wants this go.

Earlier Sunday, Clinton was asked if the participants in the conference shouldnt be doing more.

I am incredibly sympathetic to the calls that somebody do something, she told CBS News. But it is also important to stop and ask what that is and who is going to do it and how capable anybody is of doing it.

Asked about continued US reluctance to provide weapons to the Syrian rebels, Clinton responded: What are we going to arm them with? ... Were not going to bring tanks over the borders of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Thats not going to happen. So maybe at best you can smuggle in, you know, automatic weapons. Maybe some other weapons that you could get in. To whom? Where do you go?

Aren't you paid to answer those questions?

Posted by:Steve White

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