The call for Assad to leave power comes in the wake of his bloody crackdown. | REUTERS Obama to Assad: 'Get out of the way'

President Barack Obama made the first explicit U.S. call Thursday for Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave his post, saying the “time has come” for the leader to step aside for “the sake of the Syrian people.”

The White House also imposed tough new sanctions on a regime that is believed to have killed thousands of protesters.


“The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way,” Obama said in a written statement released Thursday morning, while leaders from the United Kingdom, France and Germany also issued calls for Assad to step down.

“His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing and slaughtering his own people,” Obama said. “We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.”

Obama’s statement — and a flood of supporting documents — came from the White House just minutes before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took to the podium at the State Department to reinforce the president’s comments on national television.

“As President Obama said this morning, no outside power can or should impose on this transition,” Clinton said.

“It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders in a democratic system based on the rule of law and dedicated to protecting the rights of all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, religion, sect or gender,” Clinton said. “Assad is standing in their way. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for him to step aside and leave this transition to the Syrians themselves. And that is what we will work to achieve.”

Denouncing the behavior of the Assad regime in recent months, Obama said he “strongly condemn[s] this brutality,” which amounts to “violations of the universal rights of the Syrian people [that] have revealed to Syria, the region and the world the Assad government’s flagrant disrespect for the dignity of the Syrian people.”

According to some estimates, Syrian forces have killed more than 2,000 demonstrators.

The president said that while “the United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria,” his administration can step up its pressure for Assad to “get out of the way” by imposing tougher sanctions on the regime.

The administration, Obama said, is “announcing unprecedented sanctions to deepen the financial isolation of the Assad regime and further disrupt its ability to finance a campaign of violence against the Syrian people.”

On Thursday, he signed an executive order requiring the immediate freezing of all of the Syrian government’s assets under U.S. jurisdiction and blocking all Americans from engaging in any transactions with the government.

The order also bans the import of petroleum that originated in Syria and prohibits Americans from dealing with the Syrian petroleum industry. “We expect today’s actions to be amplified by others,” Obama said.

The administration’s demand that Assad get out marks a defined policy shift by the Obama administration, which has previously stated that he had lost his legitimacy as a ruler but has not articulated a clear demand for the Syrian president to leave power.

Administration officials including Clinton had pushed back against reports suggesting a tougher stance on Syria was coming. “It’s not going to be any news if the United States says Assad needs to go,” she said Tuesday at the National Defense University in Washington.

A leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, charged that Obama’s latest move in the Syria crisis was too slow in coming.

“It has taken President Obama far too long to speak out forcefully against Assad and his vicious crackdown in Syria,” Romney said in a statement.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) praised Obama’s action but also suggested that it should have come sooner.

“Good news and a much-needed measure,” McCain said on Twitter. “Better late than never.”

Other GOP members of Congress offered undiluted backing for Obama’s action.

“Under the Assad regime, Syria has been an Iran proxy and supporter of terror,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said on his Twitter feed. “I join @BarackObama in calling for Mr. Assad’s resignation.”

In a conference call with reporters, senior administration officials rejected suggestions that they reacted more slowly and diffidently to the Syrian crisis than to those in Egypt and Libya.

“We have steadily ratcheted up our pressure on the Syrian regime over the course of the last several months,” said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We moved to punitive measures in Syria right away,” the aide added. “Across the region, I think people know that the United States is going [to] stand up for its principles. … We’re going to have to do it in different ways in different countries.”

Officials said the U.S. wanted to issue the call for Assad’s exit in coordination with American allies and accompanied by substantive measures that would hurt the regime.

Despite the growing death toll in Syria, however, officials said they and the Syrian opposition see little likelihood of any external military intervention such as the NATO operation in Libya. “I don’t think anybody believes that that is the desired course in Syria,” said one official on the call.

Last Wednesday, the Treasury Department imposed new sanctions on Syria’s largest mobile phone operator, as well as a Syrian bank and its Lebanese subsidiary.

“We urge those countries still buying Syrian oil and gas, those countries still sending Assad weapons, those countries whose political and economic support give him comfort in his brutality, to get on the right side of history,” Clinton said Friday at the State Department. Earlier Thursday, U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the administration recognizes that the move is unlikely to immediately force Assad out or change his regime’s behavior, but will send a message that he is no longer welcome on the international stage.

A high-level United Nations team on Thursday released a report, suggesting that the U.N. Security Council refer Syria to the International Criminal Court for prosecution on actions by Assad’s regime, “which may amount to crimes against humanity.”

Mackenzie Weinger contributed to this report.