DAMASCUS/UNITED NATIONS : Gulf Arab states turned up the heat on Damascus Saturday, joining a growing chorus of pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad as Western leaders continued to condemn the crackdown on protesters by Syrian forces.

The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council called for an “immediate end to violence … and bloodshed.”
Its statement urged a “resort to wisdom and introducing serious and necessary reforms that would protect the rights and dignity of the [Syrian] people, and meet their aspirations.”
That call followed a pledge by the U.S., French and German leaders to consider new steps to punish Syria after a deadly crackdown on the first Friday of Ramadan, the holy Muslim month.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle led the condemnation by saying that Assad has no political future, in an interview to be published Sunday.

“I don’t believe that Assad has a political future ahead of him which is supported by the Syrian people,” Westerwelle told the German Sunday newspaper Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Westerwelle’s ministry is reportedly in talks with members of the opposition in Syria.

President Barack Obama spoke separately to France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Western nations cranked up the pressure on Assad.
“The leaders condemned Assad’s continued use of indiscriminate violence against the Syrian people,” a White House statement said Friday.
They “also agreed to consider additional steps to pressure the Assad government and support the Syrian people,” it added.

Washington has already imposed a raft of measures against Assad, his family and associates of the government, but lawmakers have called on Obama to ban all U.S. businesses from operating in Syria, and for more sanctions.
U.N. chief Ban Ki-Moon Saturday, reportedly spoke to Assad by telephone to express the U.N.’s alarm at the escalating violence and demand that Assad stop deploying the military against civilians.
“In a phone conversation with President Assad of Syria today, the Secretary-General [Ban Ki-moon] expressed his strong concern and that of the international community at the mounting violence and death toll in Syria over the past days,” the U.N. press office said..

The statement added that Ban “urged the president to stop the use of military force against civilians immediately.”
Ban has been trying for months to speak with Assad, U.N. officials have said, but the Syrian president had been refusing to take his calls. The last time the secretary-general spoke with Assad was in May, when he told Assad to end the violent crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrators.
The Syrian government has sought to crush the democracy movement with brutal force, killing around 1,650 civilians and arresting thousands of dissenters, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Group.