Assad fails to quell protests with talk of reform

Thousands of enraged protesters took to the streets of Syria yesterday after the country's beleaguered president said his regime would consider political reforms - including an end to his Baath Party's political monopoly.

In a 70-minute televised speech, Bashar al-Assad acknowledged demands for reform were legitimate, but he rehashed allegations that "saboteurs" were exploiting the country's three-month-old pro-democracy uprising. He also called for national dialogue but warned "there is no political solution with those who carry arms and kill".

"There are those who have demands that they want the state to meet, and I have spoken before about the legitimate demands. This is one of the state's duties toward its people," Mr Assad told supporters at Damascus University.

He said a national dialogue would start soon and he was forming a committee to study constitutional amendments, including one that would open the way to forming political parties other than his own.

He added he expected a package of reforms by the end of the year at the latest. Parliamentary elections, scheduled for August, might be postponed if the reform committee decides to delay them, the president said.

But the speech signalled Mr Assad's clear intent to try to ride out the wave of protests, showing the steel that has kept his family in power for 40 years, playing on fears his downfall could usher in chaos. "We want the people to back to reforms but we must isolate true reformers from saboteurs," he said.

Other besieged dictators across the Middle East - notably Egypt's Hosni Mubarak - used the same argument as they sought to hold on to power during the Arab Spring. In Syria, the warning of chaos has a special resonance, given the country's volatile mix of ethnic groups and religious minorities.

The speech's vague timetable and lack of specifics left Syrian dissidents deeply dissatisfied.

"It did not give a vision about beginning a new period to start a transfer from a dictatorship into a national democratic regime with political pluralism," Hassan Abdul-Azim, a prominent opposition figure, said.

Activists said protests erupted in several towns, including in the restive northern province of Idlib, in the cities of Homs, Hama and Latakia in central Syria, and in the southern town of Daraa, where major protests first flared in mid-March. Many shouted they wanted to see Mr Assad go.

"We want only one thing: Toppling the regime!" read one banner. In the Damascus suburb of Arbeen, protesters shouted, "Liar! Liar! Liar!" as they marched.

The accounts could not immediately be independently confirmed because Syria has barred foreign journalists and put tight restrictions on the local media.The opposition estimates more than 1,400 Syrians have been killed and 10,000 detained after Mr Assad unleashed his military, pro-regime gunmen and the country's other security forces to crush the protest movement that erupted in March. But the deadly crackdown has only fuelled the protests.

Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, said the president's speech was a "predictable disappointment".

International pressure on the regime has been mounting steadily. Yesterday, the European Union condemned the worsening violence and said it was preparing to expand its sanctions. But it stopped short of announcing new penalties, and it did not call for Mr Assad to step down.

Almost 11,000 Syrians have fled the crackdown into neighbouring Turkey, in an embarrassing spectacle for one of the most tightly controlled countries in the Middle East.