(VOA News) Suzanne Presto - The Obama administration says Syria would be "a better place" without leader Bashar al-Assad. Although senior U.S. officials repeatedly have called on President Assad to stop the brutal crackdown on demonstrators, President Barack Obama has not explicitly called on him to step down. The head of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, Radwan Ziadeh, says it is important for President Obama to explicitly call on Assad to step down. "Seeing that will encourage also more Arabic countries and more European countries to do the same," said Ziadeh. "It will encourage more army, especially more Alawite senior army officers, to defect."
2011-08-12 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive