Stop attacks, Assad warned

LONDON ( AP) — The United States, European and Arab nations were set to deliver a stern warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad that he must agree to an immediate ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid into areas hardest hit by his regime’s brutal crackdown on opponents or face unspecified punishments and an increasingly emboldened and powerful armed resistance.

Diplomats said the “Friends of Syria“group meeting in Tunis yesterday would demand Assad's compliance. They said that failure on his part would result in tougher sanctions and predicted that his opponents would grow stronger unless he accedes and accepts a political transition that would see him leave power.

If Assad doesn't comply, “we think that the pressure will continue to build. I think that the strategy followed by the Syrians and their allies is one that can't stand the test of legitimacy ... for any length of time,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in London after meeting about a dozen of her foreign minister colleagues to prepare for the Tunis event.

Clinton and others ruled out any overt, direct lethal military aid to Assad's opponents, but her comments indicated that such steps were at least being considered if not already being done.

A draft of the Tunis conference‘s final document obtained by calls on "the Syrian government to implement an immediate ceasefire and to allow free and unimpeded access by the United Nations and humanitarian agencies to carry out a full assessment of needs in Homs and other areas.“

Homs, Syria's third-largest city, has been under a fierce government attack for nearly three weeks.

The draft, which is still subject to change, also demands "that humanitarian agencies be permitted to deliver vital relief goods and services to civilians affected by the violence.”