The United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Bulgaria and the Netherlands took action Tuesday against Syrian diplomats. Britain’s foreign secretary said the countries involved in Tuesday’s expulsions would also push for tougher sanctions against Syria.
The moves came after the killings Friday in Houla, a collection of farming villages in Syria’s Homs province – one of the deadliest single events in a 15-month-old uprising against Assad that has killed thousands.
A U.N. report Tuesday said 49 children and 34 women were among the 108 people who died, but it did not decisively say who carried out most of the killings.
«This is the most effective way we’ve got of sending a message of revulsion of what has happened in Syria,» Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr said in Canberra. In a statement, he called the Houla killings a «hideous and brutal crime» and said Australia would not engage with the Syrian government unless it abides by a U.N. cease-fire plan.
Diplomats at the U.N., the European Union and the Arab League have been working since the Houla massacre to coordinate new action against Syria’s government, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.
The expulsions up the pressure on Syrian allies such as Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin is traveling to Germany and France this week and is likely to come under even greater criticism of his Syria-supportive stance.
«We have to continue our work with the Russians,» British Foreign Secretary William Hague said. «We will continue to discuss this with Russia. Russia has particular leverage on the regime and therefore has a particular role in this crisis.»
Hague said that the situation in Syria is more complicated than what international powers faced in Libya last year, when the United Nations approved intervention against dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.
The U.S. State Department said Tuesday that the charge d’affaires at the Syrian Embassy has been given 72 hours to leave the United States. Syria has not had an ambassador in the U.S. since the previous envoy left last year to take another post.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. holds «the Syrian government responsible for this slaughter of innocent lives.»
Britain is expelling three Syrian diplomats to protest the Houla killings, among them Charge d’Affaires Ghassan Dalla – the country’s top ranking diplomat in London.
In Canada, Foreign Minister John Baird said all Syrian diplomats and their families have five days to leave. Another Syrian diplomat expected in Canada will be refused entry.
In France, Syria’s former colonial ruler, new President Francois Hollande showed that he is not backing down from his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy’s tough line on Syria.
Syrian Ambassador Lamia Shakkour was notified Tuesday that she is persona non grata, along with two other embassy officials, the French Foreign Ministry said. Hollande said Shakkour is being expelled but that the timing is complicated by her dual status as Syria’s ambassador to Paris-based UNESCO.
Hollande said that after high-level discussions with British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, it had been decided to deploy «a certain number of … pressure tactics,» against Syria.
Germany on Tuesday announced Syria’s ambassador had three days to leave. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Germany and its allies hope «that this unambiguous message does not fall on deaf ears in Damascus.»
«The Syrian regime bears responsibility for the terrible events in Houla,» Westerwelle said in a statement. He said Germany will push for the U.N. Security Council to consider the situation in Syria again.
«It has been clear not just since Houla that Syria has no future under Assad,» Westerwelle said.
The Italian Foreign Ministry said Syrian Ambassador Khaddour Hassan was ordered out of the country. Spain said it was giving Syrian Ambassador Hussam Edin Aala and four other diplomats based in Madrid three days to leave.
Australia gave Charge d’Affaires Jawdat Ali, the most senior Syrian diplomat in Australia, and another diplomat from the Syrian Embassy, three days to leave the country.
Bulgaria gave its Syrian diplomats three days to leave.
Other countries stopped short of expulsions, either to protect their ties with Damascus or because some Syrian ambassadors serve several countries simultaneously.
Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal declared the Syrian ambassador to his country «persona non grata» but said he would not be expelled because he is also Syria’s ambassador to Belgium. «It is no longer possible to work with a country with such a president,» Rosenthal said on the ministry’s official Twitter feed.
Sweden is not expelling Syrian diplomats because the Swedes are concerned that would affect their own diplomatic presence in Syria. Sweden believes that it’s important to maintain that presence in order to have contacts «not least with the opposition,» said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Catarina Axelsson.
In Vienna, Foreign Ministry spokesman Nikolaus Lutterotti said the Syrian ambassador was being summoned to the ministry where officials will deliver a very hard protest about the massacre.
When asked if the expulsions were EU-wide, Lutterotti said this had not yet been decided. He said the ambassador to Austria would not be expelled as he holds an additional function as the representative to the U.N. organizations in Vienna.
Turkey said it has no immediate plans to expel anyone. Tunisia, the birthplace of Arab uprisings against entrenched autocrats that spread across the region last year to Syria, had already expelled Syria’s ambassador.
There was no public Syrian reaction to the coordinated expulsions. Phone calls to Syria’s embassy in Paris were not answered, and an official at the Syrian delegation to UNESCO refused to comment.
The U.N. estimates 9,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011. Assad’s regime denies there is any popular will behind the country’s uprising.
In Damascus, international envoy Kofi Annan met with Assad on Tuesday and said his peace plan cannot work without «bold steps» to stop the violence, said Annan’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi.
Hollande said Tuesday that Paris will host a meeting in early July of the so-called Friends of Syria seeking a diplomatic solution to the conflict.Associated Press reporters across Europe, in Australia and Canada contributed to this story.
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State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland said in a statement the U.S. holds the Syrian government responsible for the death of more than 100 people in Homs province on Friday.
»This massacre is the most unambiguous indictment to date of the Syrian government’s flagrant violations of its UN Security Council obligations under Resolutions 2042 and 2043 along with the regime’s ongoing threat to peace and security,» the statement read.
Switzerland declared the Syrian ambassador to the country ‘persona non grata,’ on Tuesday. Syria is represented in Switzerland by Ambassador Lamia Shakkour, who resides in Paris.
On his visit to Damascus, peace envoy Kofi Annan expressed the international community’s «grave concern» about the violence in Syria and the recent killings in Houla in particular, Reuters reports.
Annan’s spokesman said in a statement the envoy «conveyed in frank terms his view to President Assad that the six-point plan cannot succeed without bold steps to stop the violence and release detainees, and stressed the importance of full implementation of the plan.» UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan is pictured during a meeting with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem in Damascus on May 28, 2012. (LOUAI BESHARA/AFP/GettyImages)
A video uploaded to YouTube by Syrian activists purportedly shows the bloodied bodies of dozens of small children lying on a carpet floor following a massacre in Houla. On Friday, Syrian security forces reportedly assaulted the town in Homs province, killing at least 108 people including dozens of women and children.
According to a statement by the deputy head of Iran’s elite Quds force, Ismail Gha’ani, Iran is aiding the Syrian army as it carries out a brutal crackdown on the country’s uprising.
The semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reportedly quoted Gha’ani on Sunday, May 27, as claiming that Iran’s presence in Syria prevented «big massacres.»
«If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale,» Gha’ani said, according to Al Arabiya.
Read more on HuffPost World.
Amateur video obtained by Reuters purports to show chaos and bloodshed in the town of Houla, where more than 100 people were killed last week.
The U.S. State Department will expel Syria’s charge d’affaires, a U.S. official told Reuters. According to the official, Syria’s top diplomat will be given 72 hours to leave the United States. Reuters explains Syria’s ambassador to the United States left the country last year but was never replaced.
@ BreakingNews : Bulgaria expels Syria’s charge d’affaires as part of international response to Houla massacre, foreign ministry says – @Reuters
This frame grab made from an amateur video provided by Syrian activists on Monday, May 28, 2012, purports to show the massacre in Houla on May 25 that killed more than 100 people, many of them children. The amateur footage shows people running along a street, purportedly just after the attack on Houla started. (AP Photo/Amateur Video via AP video)
