Austria Supports Renewed Sanctions against Syria
Vienna is in favor of further sanctions against the regime of Syria's Bashar Assad, Austrian Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said in a radio interview Saturday.
"We cannot accept what Bashar Assad is doing to his countrymen at the moment -- shooting at protestors, hunting the opposition," Spindelegger told Oe1 radio, adding that "U.N.-led" sanctions should be reinforced and should target specific people.
"We have a list of Syrians whose passports are banned but we have to extend the list," he said.
Austria was also in favor of the U.N. Security Council considering an embargo on Syrian oil, "which we already decided with the European Union", Spindelegger said.
But he rejected military intervention.
"Military experts have cast this option aside," he said.
Spindelegger praised the work of the Arab League and called for closer cooperation with the body which he described as "committed to putting Assad and Syria under pressure, because (the members) themselves cannot accept what is happening."
Arab ministers gathered in Cairo on Saturday to draw up sanctions against Syria to punish Assad's regime for defying an ultimatum to allow in observers and pressing a deadly crackdown.
The finance ministers were to thrash out a package -- expected to include the suspension of flights and freezing of government assets -- which will be put to foreign ministers on Sunday.
At least 3,500 people are estimated to have died at the hands of Assad's security forces since mid-March, according to U.N. figures.
Source: Agence France Presse
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