Obama to pressure Assad, offer aid to reformers

BEN FELLER

AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama will use a sweep­ing Mid­dle East speech on Thurs­day to sharply defend new sanc­tions on Syr­ian Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad as the U.S. gov­ern­ment tough­ened its mes­sage for the repres­sive leader: Embrace democ­racy or get out. In a pri­mary thrust of his address, Obama will also announce aid to coun­tries that embrace reforms, hop­ing to steer a region roil­ing in vio­lence toward demo­c­ra­tic change that lasts.

Col­lec­tively, Obama’s eco­nomic pro­pos­als will account for much of what’s new in an address that, by design, is intended to look back and let him put his imprint on the mas­sive change across the Mid­dle East and North Africa over the last six months. The gist of what Obama will argue is that the United States must help nations mod­ern­ize their economies and give job oppor­tu­ni­ties to their young peo­ple so that democ­racy can take hold and thrive — the kind of regional sta­bil­ity that is deeply in the polit­i­cal inter­ests of his government.

The pres­i­dent plans to for­give roughly $1 bil­lion in debt owed by Egypt to free up money for job-creation efforts there. And he will reveal other steps to bol­ster loans, trade and inter­na­tional sup­port in Egypt and in Tunisia, the two nations seen as mod­els of hope in a time when protests else­where in that part of the world are being vio­lently crushed.

Obama is also expected to recal­i­brate the U.S. posi­tion on the flail­ing Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He will warn both sides that they face greater risks by not com­ing together on a peace deal than by going their own ways. It is an effort in which he has sunk his own cap­i­tal and will spend more before his heavy week of Mideast diplo­macy ends.

Over­all, Obama will try to con­vince Amer­i­can audi­ences that the fate of coun­tries in the region is worth the money and atten­tion of United States even dur­ing weak eco­nomic times at home. To his global audi­ence, Obama wants to leave no doubt that the U.S. stands behind those seek­ing greater human rights even as it has had to defend its responses to crises.

Senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials revealed details of the speech in advance only on con­di­tion of anonymity.

The pres­i­dent will speak Thurs­day morn­ing at the State Depart­ment in Washington.

The White House on Wednes­day announced the sanc­tions on Assad and six senior Syr­ian offi­cials for human rights abuses over their bru­tal crack­down on anti-government protests.

It was the first time the gov­ern­ment per­son­ally penal­ized the Syr­ian leader for the actions of his secu­rity forces. More than 850 peo­ple have died since the upris­ing began in March.

Obama, in an exec­u­tive order, said the Syr­ian gov­ern­ment lead­ers were being held to account for “attacks on pro­test­ers, arrests and harass­ment of pro­test­ers and polit­i­cal activists, and repres­sion of demo­c­ra­tic change.”

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion had pinned hopes on Assad, seen until recent months as a prag­ma­tist and poten­tial reformer who could buck Iran­ian influ­ence and help bro­ker an even­tual Arab peace deal with Israel. But U.S. offi­cials said Assad’s increas­ingly ruth­less crack­down left them lit­tle choice but to aban­don the effort to woo Assad, and to stop exempt­ing him from the same sort of sanc­tions already applied to Libya’s Moam­mar Gadhafi.

Obama has not called on Assad to step down. His gov­ern­ment came close on Wednesday.

“It is up to Assad to lead a polit­i­cal tran­si­tion or to leave,” the State Depart­ment said in talk­ing points pre­pared for the announce­ment of sanctions.

The sanc­tions will freeze any assets Assad and the six Syr­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials have in U.S. juris­dic­tion and make it ille­gal for Amer­i­cans to do busi­ness with them. The U.S. had imposed sim­i­lar sanc­tions on two of Assad’s rel­a­tives and another top Syr­ian offi­cial last month but had thus far refrained from going after Assad himself.

Trea­sury offi­cials could give no esti­mate on how much in Assad’s assets were located in the United States that would be frozen by the new sanc­tions order.

The U.S. move came as Assad said ear­lier Wednes­day that his secu­rity forces had made mis­takes and blamed poorly trained police at least in part for the crack­down. He claimed the country’s cri­sis is draw­ing to a close even as forces unleashed tank shells on opponents.

Obama speech was expected to be roughly split into thirds: a review of the polit­i­cal changes across the region for bet­ter and worse, coun­try by coun­try; the eco­nomic aid pack­age; and the push for bet­ter secu­rity in the region, which will include the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

It will all be pre­sented in the con­text of a future with al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden gone.

The president’s offer­ing of eco­nomic help is intended to serve as an incen­tive for other peo­ples to keep push­ing for democ­racy. Among the ele­ments of his approach:

— The can­cel­ing of roughly $1 bil­lion in debt for Egypt. The inten­tion is that money freed up from that debt oblig­a­tion would be swapped toward invest­ments in pri­or­ity sec­tors of the Egypt­ian econ­omy, likely to focus on entre­pre­neur­ship and employ­ment for younger peo­ple. Unem­ploy­ment rates are soar­ing in Egypt and across the region.

— The guar­an­tee­ing of up to $1 bil­lion in bor­row­ing for Egypt through the Over­seas Pri­vate Invest­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, a U.S. gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion that mobi­lizes pri­vate capital.

— Promises by the U.S. to launch a new trade part­ner­ship in the Mid­dle East and North Africa and to prod world finan­cial insti­tu­tions to help Egypt and Tunisia more.

Posted by AP News on May 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.