Pages

Friday, October 21, 2011

Who are our great leaders going to overthrow and kill next?

Three down, two to go: Obama warns other Middle Eastern dictators as Libyan fighters set their sights on the the 'germ of Syria'

By Rick Dewsbury

President Barack Obama hailed Muammar Gaddafi's death as a warning to dictators across the Middle East that iron-fisted rule 'inevitably comes to an end.

Obama said the fall of Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya in revolutions dubbed the Arab Spring proved that the leaders of Syria and Yemen should be fearful of similar endings.

Protests that broke out in Syria in March have so far seen more than 3,000 people killed after the leadership's violent military response.
Washington has demanded that Bashar al-Assad, the country's leader, halt his crackdown on democracy protests and step down. The White House is also pressing Yemen's longtime president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to leave office in the face of political upheaval.

Obama has also condemned Iran's human rights record and is seeking further sanctions against Tehran over an alleged foiled plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington.
'For the region, today's events prove once more that the rule of an iron fist inevitably comes to an end,' Obama said.
Obama stressed that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had lost his legitimacy to rule.

The leader said the United States would be a partner to Libya's interim government and urged a swift transition to democracy but made no specific promises of aid.
The warnings from Washington were backed up by Libyan revolutionaires themselves, who vowed to help their 'brothers and sisters in Syria' fight for freedom.
'This is the fate of a leader who destroyed the lives of his people for decades and opened fire on them before his demise,' said Mohamed Beltagy, senior member of Egypt's influential Muslim Brotherhood.

'Gaddafi's fate should be a lesson for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Yemen's (Ali Abdullah) Saleh,' he said.
The warnings were welcomed by Syrian dissidents who have continued their struggles.
'If I were a member of the regime, Bashar or [his brother] Maher, I would start to feel rather concerned,' said Amr al-Azm, a Syrian dissident in the United States and member of the opposition, told the Independent.
The presidents of Tunisia and then Egypt were the first to be ousted in the 'Arab Spring' that has brought ordinary people onto the streets to demand political change where many kings and presidents have ruled for decades.
But Tunisia's Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak were driven out by protests with relatively little violence. Gaddafi, whose bloodied body was shown in footage carried by Arabic television channels, was ousted after months of fighting during which he turned the full might of his army against rebels, firing missiles, artillery and other heavy weapons at them.
'Hell awaits Gaddafi. I hate to rejoice in anyone's death, but what he did to his people was atrocious,' said Nancy El Kassab, an Egyptian television executive producer...

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051683/Gaddafi-dead-Obama-warns-Syrian-President-Bashar-al-Assad.html#ixzz1bQRKWaVJ

No comments:

Post a Comment