BRUSSELS: "Outraged" European foreign ministers on Monday prepared to beef up sanctions on President Bashar Al-Assad as Britain demanded he "reform or step aside".
Amid reports of continuing bloodshed in Syria’s crackdown on protesters, European Union ministers also angrily demanded action at the United Nations, slamming Moscow’s resistance to any such move.
Stepping into one-day talks with his 26 counterparts, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said he hoped Turkey would use its influence on Damascus to tell the regime that "they are losing legitimacy, that Assad should reform or step aside".
He added that he hoped Turkey "will be very clear and very bold about that".
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who chairs the talks, said on arrival that the ministers were waiting "with interest" to hear Assad’s speech to the nation.
"That will affect of course the conclusions that we take," she said.
A draft resolution due for adoption seen by AFP said the EU was "actively" preparing to "expand its restrictive measures by additional designations".
It also states that Assad’s "credibility and leadership depends on the reforms he himself promised".
The EU has been looking at adding up to a dozen people and businesses to a blacklist of 23 people targeted by an asset freeze and travel ban which already includes Assad and key allies.
But Sweden’s outspoken foreign affairs chief Carl Bildt said European sanctions were a second-best choice to a global condemnation that must come from the United Nations.
And Germany’s Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, whose government had split with its EU partners by refusing to vote with them at the UN on Libya, said there could be no comparison between the two situations.
With the situation in Syria going "from bad to worse", Bildt said it was vital for the UN Security Council "to express the outrage of the world".
"The silence of the Security Council until now can be seen as an indirect tolerance of what is going on in Syria and that is unacceptable," Bildt added.
"We have sanctions and we’ll probably reinforce them but as long we have the silence of the Security Council we are in a difficult situation," he said. "I think there will be a strong message on that coming from here."
Several European nations — notably Britain, France, Germany and Portugal — have joined Washington in pushing for a UN resolution condemning the crackdown but were stonewalled by permanent Security Council members China and Russia.
Westerwelle said Moscow’s UN position "goes in the wrong direction".
Western military intervention in Libya must not be used as a pretext, he said. "This does not justify failing to act together on an international level against Syria."
"You don’t give up on helping one country because you have in another," he said.
The German minister said images of events in Syria were "inhumane" and accused Assad of "causing much distress."
"It is essential for the international community to act together and agree on widening sanctions," he said. "Pressure must be exercised on Assad’s regime. His political isolation must be upheld."
