World leaders call for Assad to resign

WORLD leaders united yesterday to demand that Syrian president, Bashar Assad resign, saying his brutal suppression of his people had made him unfit to lead.

The coordinated messages from Washington, London, Paris, Berlin and Brussels were accompanied by a UN recommendation that Syria be referred to the International Criminal Court for investigation of atrocities and by tough new US sanctions freezing all Syrian government assets in the US and targeting the country’s lucrative energy sector.

The moves intensified mounting pressure on Assad, who has refused to ease his regime’s ruthless crackdown on a five-month old opposition uprising and has backed away from promises of reform. Instead, he has unleashed his security forces on numerous cities, killing nearly 2,000 people, many of them innocent civilians, according to rights groups.