US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves Thursday for a
two-country tour aimed at raising pressure on Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad to end a deadly year-long crackdown.
In the second such push in a month, Clinton travels first to Riyadh
for talks Friday and Saturday with Saudi and other Gulf Arab leaders
before engaging in broader meetings Sunday with Arab, Turkish and
Western officials in Istanbul.
Clinton will meet in Riyadh with Saudi King Abdullah and Foreign
Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal as well as ministers of Saudi Arabia's
five Gulf Arab neighbors - Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab
Emirates and Oman.
The Friends of Syria meeting in Turkey follows the inaugural one
Clinton attended in Tunis at the end of February - a response to Western
and Arab failure to win Russian and Chinese backing at the UN Security
Council.
Aides said Clinton will discuss how to make Assad comply with a new
plan to end the crackdown on a pro-democracy movement, study further
sanctions against his regime and consider ways to aid the opposition who
will be in Istanbul.
The chief US diplomat was highly skeptical Tuesday after Assad said
he accepted a six-point plan that Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League
envoy, had submitted to him earlier this month.
"Given Assad's history of overpromising and under delivering, that
commitment must now be matched by immediate actions," Clinton said. "We
will judge Assad's sincerity and seriousness by what he does, not by
what he says."
Annan's plan calls for a commitment to stop all armed violence, a
daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire, full media access, an inclusive
Syrian-led political process, a right to demonstrate, and release of
prisoners.
-AFP/NOW Lebanon
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