BEIRUT/DAMASCUS/WASHINGTON: The United States said Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad used a speech to try to “deflect the attention” of his people from his commitment to end his violent crackdown, as the United Nations said 400 people had been killed in Syria since the arrival of Arab monitors on Dec. 26. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe also criticized Assad’s speech Tuesday and said the Syrian leader was “divorced from reality.”
In the speech, Assad blamed foreign plotters Tuesday for the deadly 10-month-old protests against his regime and vowed to crush their “terrorism” with an iron fist.

“He’s doing everything but what he needs to do,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
She said he must meet the commitments Syria made to the Arab League to end the violence, withdraw heavy weapons from cities, admit journalists, free political prisoners and allow for a real political dialogue.
“So that’s what we’re looking to see in Syria, and obviously this was an effort to deflect the attention of his own people from the real problem,” Nuland told reporters.

“Throughout the course of this speech, Assad manages to blame a foreign conspiracy that’s so vast with regard to the situation in Syria that it now includes the Arab League, most of the Syrian opposition, the entire international community,” Nuland said.

“He throws responsibility on everybody, but back on himself,” she said.
“And with regard to his own responsibility for the violence in Syria, he seems to aggressively deny any responsibility or any hand in the role of his own security forces,” she added.

The president’s 100-minute speech, his first public address since June, contained some promises of reform, but no sweeping concessions that might placate an opposition now determined to end more than four decades of domination by the Assad family.

Assad, 46, offered a referendum on a new constitution in March before a multi-party parliamentary election that has been much postponed. Under the present constitution, Assad’s Baath party is designated as “the leader of the state and society.”
But the Syrian leader gave no sign that he was willing to relinquish the power he inherited on his father’s death in 2000.
“I am not someone who abandons responsibility,” he declared.

In the latest bloodshed, Syrian forces shot dead 10 people, most of them anti-Assad protesters, in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Gunfire from a checkpoint also killed a man in Homs, it added.
Authorities have barred most independent media from Syria, making it hard to verify accounts by either activists or officials.

Assad made scathing remarks about the Arab League, which has sent monitors to check Syria’s compliance with an Arab peace plan after suspending it from the 22-member body in November. “The Arab League has failed for six decades to take a position in the Arab interest,” he taunted.

The Arab League condemned an attack Monday in which 11 of its monitors were hurt by demonstrators in the port city of Latakia, saying that Syria had breached its obligation to protect them. Internet footage appeared to show a pro-Assad crowd in Latakia surging around the white vehicles used by monitors.

“Unfortunately there have been attacks on monitors, especially those from [Gulf] countries, attacks from non-opposition elements,” said the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan.
“The task of the monitors is getting more difficult every day because we do not see a decline in ... killings,” he said.
The Syrian regime said it was continuing to provide security for the observers and condemned any act that obstructs their work.

While opting to keep the mission going at least until Jan. 19, the Arab League said Sunday Syria had not fully implemented an agreement to stop violence, withdraw troops from cities, free prisoners, provide media access and open a political dialogue.

Opposition figures say the monitors have failed to stem the bloodshed, but Russia, an old ally of Assad’s government, said Tuesday the mission had a stabilizing role.
Assad complained that Syria was the target of a relentless foreign media campaign. Blaming unrest on “outside planning,” he said: “The outside now regrettably includes Arabs.”

His approach to unrest, casting it as a foreign conspiracy and countering it with violent repression and hazy promises of reform, resembled that of other Arab leaders confronted by mass protests in the past year. Three autocrats have been toppled.

At least 400 people have been killed in Syria since Arab League monitors started a monitoring mission on Dec. 26, and 40 people are being killed each day, a top U.N. official told the Security Council Tuesday.

U.N. assistant secretary general B. Lynn Pascoe gave the new casualty figure in a closed meeting of the 15-member council, according to envoys. The U.N. had previously said that more than 5,000 people have been killed since protests against Assad started in March. Syrian authorities blame armed Islamists they say have killed 2,000 security force members.

Despite the high casualty toll, Assad denied any policy to shoot demonstrators. “There is no cover for anyone. There are no orders for anyone to open fire on any citizen,” he said.

Nevertheless, his priority was to restore order, which could only be achieved by “hitting terrorists with an iron fist.”
Burhan Ghalioun, head of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), called Assad’s speech dangerous because he had “insisted on using violence against our people, considered the revolution a terrorist conspiracy and thus undercut any Arab or non-Arab initiative to find a political solution to the crisis.”
“The speech didn’t bring anything new that could end the crisis and its repercussions,” said Hassan Abdul-Azim, a prominent opposition figure in Syria.

“Assad talked once again about foreign conspiracy and claimed the Arab League is a cover for a foreign intervention, without pointing out that the Arab League wants, through its plan, to protect the Syrian people,” he said.

The struggle in Syria, Iran’s only Arab ally, has alarmed its neighbors. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a former friend turned critic of Assad, warned Monday that Syria was “heading toward a religious, sectarian, racial war.”

Turkish customs officials intercepted four trucks Tuesday suspected of carrying military equipment from Iran to Syria. The governor of Kilis province Yusuf Odabas said the trucks were confiscated at the Oncupinar border crossing into Syria after police received information about their cargo, according to Dogan news agency.
“The four trucks were confiscated by customs. They are alleged to be carrying military equipment,” the governor said. He added that experts were being sent from Ankara to examine the cargo.

Meanwhile, Ghalioun urged the Arab League to refer Syria to the United Nations Security Council to halt Assad’s efforts to stamp out protests and to protect civilians.
The Arab League is divided over such a step, which in the case of Libya led to a U.N. resolution that NATO used as the basis for an air campaign that helped rebels oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.

Russia and China have opposed any Security Council move on Syria, while Western powers have not advocated military action in a country located in the volatile heart of the Middle East.
The West is wary because of Syrian opposition splits over the role of armed resistance, the weight Islamist groups should have in any joint opposition body, and the scope for Arab, or U.N. action to drive Assad from power.