Syria deploys tanks to protests

BEIRUT, Lebanon – With tanks now patrolling the streets of a restive Syrian city, the Obama administration is preparing to take its first concrete steps against President Bashar Assad and his top lieutenants: the imposition of sanctions for an increasingly bloody crackdown on demonstrators.

The regime in Damascus escalated the violence Monday, ordering army tanks and troops into action against protesters in the southern city of Daraa. The move follows a tumultuous weekend in which Syrian security forces gunned down an estimated 120 pro-democracy protesters. More than 200 people have died since the uprising erupted five weeks ago.

Obama administration officials said they are readying orders that would freeze U.S. assets of senior Syrian officials and deny them permission to travel in the United States.

U.S. sanctions are unlikely to produce a dramatic impact because Syrian officials apparently own few U.S. assets. But the move signaled a notable shift by the Obama administration, which has worked hard to build better relations with Damascus, a regime it considers a strategic key for security in the Middle East.

European officials said they also are considering steps against Assad’s regime. Syrian officials maintain far larger investments in Europe than in the U.S., so economic sanctions or travel bans there would have a more direct impact.

The Obama administration hopes U.S. sanctions will help build pressure on its European allies, especially France and Britain, to follow suit. Officials in Washington have consulted closely with counterparts in London and Paris on how best to persuade Assad to show restraint.

Moves by British and French officials against Syria could be particularly important. France, the former colonial power, retains strong cultural and economic relations with Damascus. Assad lived a number of years in Britian and may have financial assets stored there.

David Schenker, a former Middle East adviser at the Pentagon, said steps to isolate Syria, especially by European countries, would sting.

Even though he took over from his father a decade ago and has maintained Syria’s authoritarian system, Assad has cherished the idea that he retains “an international legitimacy and acceptability,” said Schenker, now an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a nonpartisan think tank.

In Syria, heavy-caliber gunfire crackled at dawn Monday as tanks rolled into Daraa, the flashpoint of the uprising. Amateur videos posted online appeared to show bodies in the streets as protesters came under fire from the tanks’ gunners and snipers on nearby roofs.

One report by activists said more than 25 people were killed “but no one could get close to them because of the brutal shooting.” The activists said that a military force of between 4,000 and 5,000 men marched into Daraa along with up to a dozen tanks.

Several military officers in Daraa province told the Los Angeles Times that they had orders to shoot any protester, adding that many soldiers were afraid to resist and that failing to carry out orders was tantamount to a death sentence.

“We have orders to open fire,” said one of the officers, speaking on condition of anonymity due to concerns for his safety. “We are afraid to carry them out because there will be more killing. But if we don’t, someone will kill us.”

Syrian activists in touch with witnesses in Daraa reported that at least five military officers, including two with the rank of captain, and nine soldiers refused to carry out orders.

It was impossible to confirm reports from Daraa since the city was effectively cut off before the army launched its raid. Syrian authorities cut phone service, disconnected electrical power, and blocked roads to the farming hub of about 1 million people. Most foreign journalists have been barred from the country.

The regime’s ratcheting up of pressure was not limited to Daraa. At least 13 people had been killed since Sunday in the coastal city of Jebleh, activists said. Scores of people were reported arrested in the Damascus suburb of Duma. Gunfire was reported in Muadamia, another suburb.

In Washington, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said the Obama administration “is pursuing a range of possible policy options, including targeted sanctions, to respond to the crackdown in Syria and to make clear that this behavior is unacceptable.”

Syria has been ineligible for U.S. aid and most trade under a variety of earlier sanctions, some imposed because of Syria’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas, which Washington regards as terrorist organizations. But Carney said the administration “is looking at other means to increase the pressure on the regime.”

A U.S. official said targeted sanctions probably would be imposed in the next several weeks.

Though President Barack Obama has sharpened his denunciations of Syria, U.S. officials have moved cautiously. They believe they have limited leverage against the regime, and some allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, warn that Assad’s fall could spark an ethnic bloodbath or produce a successor regime that is even less savory.

As a result, U.S. officials who abandoned autocrats facing popular uprisings this spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, have not totally given up on Assad.

A White House spokesman said Syrian authorities’ relationship with the United States “will be determined by their actions.”