Paris: French President Nicolas Sarkozy said
on Wednesday that Syria`s leader is acting like a murderer and should
be sent to the International Criminal Court.
With diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria
faltering, the French leader urged humanitarian corridors to
allow refugees out and aid in to the country.
"We must obtain humanitarian corridors, and for that we
must unblock the Russian veto and Chinese veto" at the UN
Security Council, Sarkozy told Europe-1 radio.
UN Security Council members are meeting to decide what to
do next to try to stop the violence.
"The French army can in no way intervene" in Syria
without UN backing, Sarkozy said. France, Syria`s former
colonial ruler, was a leading player in the UN-mandated,
NATO-led airstrike campaign in Libya.
Sarkozy reached out to both Assad and Libya`s Moammar
Gadhafi earlier in his tenure to try get them to cooperate
with the international community.
But after both leaders responded to uprisings last year
with military repression of protesters, Sarkozy abandoned his
support for them.
The U.N. estimates that more than 7,500 people have been
killed since the anti-Assad struggle started a year ago
inspired by Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere. As Assad`s forces
used deadly force to stop the unrest, protests spread and some
Syrians took up arms.
Assad "is today behaving like a murderer and will have to
answer for himself at the International Criminal Court,"
Sarkozy said.
International envoy Kofi Annan visited Syria over the
weekend and was in Turkey on Tuesday to try to find a way to
end the violence, but both the Syrian government and the
opposition are refusing to talk to one another.
PTI
