DAMASCUS, Syria — Pro-democracy activists said Monday that the three-month-old “revolt” in Syria must go on after a speech by President Bashar al Assad which they said only deepened the crisis.
The Coordination Committee, an umbrella group of activists calling for street protests, called for “the revolution to carry on until all its aims have been achieved,” AFP reported.
“We consider any dialogue useless that does not turn the page on the current regime,” it said in a statement received by AFP. Assad’s speech on the three-month-old unrest only served to “deepen the crisis.”
Protests broke out in cities across Syria in the wake of the defiant speech, only Assad’s third since protests demanding greater freedoms and democracy erupted in mid-March.
In his speech Monday, Assad acknowledged that the country was “at a turning point,” and condemned “saboteurs” or “terrorists” for trying exploit the people’s legitimate calls for reform.
Assad rejected the idea of foreign intervention from “external forces” to solve Syria’s problems as he appeared to appeal for more time from his people.
“We meet today [Monday] at a turning point for our country,” he said. “We have to look forward” and “solve our problems by ourselves by eliminating all the elements that weaken our immunity,” Assad told an audience at Damascus University.
“Shedding the blood of any Syrian, no matter who he is, means the country is bleeding and we must stop the bleeding,” he warned, vowing to bring those responsible to justice.
However the president announced he would ask the justice ministry to look at expanding a recent amnesty for legitimate political dissenters who were not guilty of “terrorizing people.”
Assad also suggested that the process of national dialogue would begin soon, but that his government had begun meeting some of the people’s demands already, including the cancellation of decades-old emergency regulations in April and allowing the right to peaceful protests.
Changes could also be made to the constitution, he said, with elections in August and a reform package in place by September.
The set-piece address came a day after opposition activists announced they would set up a “National Council” to spearhead the struggle against Assad’s regime.
The international community has criticized Assad’s bloody military and security crackdown on the protest movement, which is concentrated on the border area with Turkey and in particular in the town of Jisr al Shughur.
As many as 1,500 Syrians are feared to have been killed and more than 10,000 are estimated to have fled to Turkey to escape the fighting.