Thursday, March 31, 2011

DAMASCUS: President Bashar Assad defied calls Wednesday to lift a decades-old emergency law and said Syria was the target of a foreign conspiracy to stir up protests.
Angry that their demands were not met, hundreds of protesters chanting “Freedom” marched in the port city of Latakia, where residents said security forces had fired in the air.

“Syria today is being subjected to a big conspiracy, whose threads extend from countries near and far,” Assad said, smiling and looking assured, without naming any countries.
“This conspiracy is different in shape and timing from what is going on in the Arab world,” he added. “Syria is not isolated from the region … but we are not a copy of other countries.”

“We don’t seek battles,” Assad, 45, said in an unusually short, televised speech before legislators who cheered for him and shouted support from their seats. “But if a battle is imposed on us today, we welcome it.”
Assad made only a passing reference to the protesters’ calls for change, saying: “We are all for reform. That is the duty of the state. But we are not for strife.” He promised that certain measures were being studied.
“Implementing reforms is not a fad. When it is just a reflection of a wave that the region is living, it is destructive,” said Assad.

The U.S. dismissed Assad’s speech as lacking “substance.”
“It’s far too easy to look for conspiracy theories [than to] respond in a meaningful way to the call for reform,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

“We expect they [the Syrian people] are going to be disappointed. We feel the speech fell short with respect to the kind of reforms that the Syrian people demanded,” he said.

Assad’s speech was surprising not so much for what he said but for what he left out.
His adviser, Bouthaina Shaaban, said last week that Syria had formed a committee to study a series of reforms, including lifting the state of emergency laws, which have been in place since 1963.

Assad, who appeared relaxed and exchanged jokes with parliamentarians, echoed that statement Wednesday.
“The measures announced Thursday were not made suddenly,” he said. “The emergency law and political parties law have been under study for a year.
“There are more, unannounced reforms … but giving a timeframe is a logistics matter. When we announce it in such circumstances, it is difficult to meet that deadline.”

He said the priority was improving living standards in the country, where many people struggle with rising prices, low salaries and lack of jobs. 
“We can sometimes postpone [dealing with] suffering that emergency law may cause … But we cannot postpone the suffering of a child whose father does not have enough money to treat him,” he said.

Social networking sites Twitter and Facebook were flooded with messages of disappointment and anger at Assad’s speech, in which he failed to mention any specific reforms the international community had urged him to take.
“What we understood from his speech is that it is imperative to bring down the regime,” wrote a user on the Facebook page “The Syrian Revolution 2011,” echoing slogans chanted in Tunisia and Egypt where entrenched rulers gave up power.
They called for protests Friday, dubbing it “Friday of Martyrs,” but it was unclear how many people would turn out to a protest movement that has abated in the last two days.

Assad warned that Syria was going through a “test of unity” and said its foes had taken advantage of the needs of the people to incite division.
“I know that the Syrian people have been awaiting this speech since last week, but I was waiting to get the full picture … to avoid giving an emotional address that would put the people at ease but have no real effect, at a time when our enemies are targeting Syria,” he said.

The demonstrations, which began on March 18, were quickly contained in Damascus, but took root in the tribal region of Daraa, south of the capital, and in the city of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. More than 60 people have been killed in the protests, according to human rights groups.

Assad said that a minority of people had tried to “spark chaos” in Daraa, but that they would be thwarted. He also said clear instructions had been issued to security forces not to harm anyone during the protests. Assad also accused foreign media of misrepresenting the protests.

Following his speech, protesters took to the streets of the Al-Sleibeh old district in Latakia, where clashes last week killed 12 people according to Syrian officials.
Assad accepted the resignation of his Cabinet Tuesday, but the government’s fall is seen as a cosmetic change since it wields little authority in Syria.

After waiting for days for the president’s address, many Syrians said it would be better if he had not spoken. “The fact that he is blaming everything on conspirators means that he does not even acknowledge the root of the problem,” said Razan Zaitouneh, a Syrian lawyer and pro-reform activist. “I don’t have an explanation for this speech, I am in a state of shock …”

“It was a speech of defiance,” said Khalil Hassan of the Beirut-based Committee of Torture Victims in the Prisons of the Syrian Regime. “He showed no respect to opposition figures or martyrs who have fallen in Syria in past years.” – Agencies