Diplomats Invoke War Crimes in Warning to Syrian Leader
The Syrian military continued its bombardment of opposition strongholds on Tuesday as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested during a Senate hearing that President Bashar al-Assad could be considered a war criminal for his relentless crackdown.
The diplomatic pressure on Mr. Assad was also applied in Geneva, where Navi Pillay, the United Nations’ top human rights official, told a meeting of the Human Rights Council that in the face of “unspeakable violations that take place every moment,” Syria should be referred to the International Criminal Court.
Mrs. Clinton said in response to a question that “there would be an argument to be made” that Mr. Assad was a war criminal based on the definition of crimes against humanity. But, she added, the label “limits options, perhaps, to persuade leaders to step down from power.”
A senior official in Tunisia told Reuters that the Tunisian government, which took power after a popular uprising ousted the president last year, would be willing to offer asylum to Mr. Assad if he would agree to hand over power.
Syrian activists said the government’s military offensive in the besieged Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs continued apace, with 26 people killed there on Tuesday, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an antigovernment group. Around the country, 102 people died in fighting on Tuesday, the group said, with 50 killed in Homs and 37 killed farther north in of Hama.
A spokesman for the United Nations said that “well over 7,500” people had died so far in more than 11 months of conflict in Syria. “We cannot give exact figures,” said the spokesman, Eduardo Del Buey, calling the new number “a reasonable estimate building off the previously provided figures and the regular, credible daily reports of casualties since.” The United Nations halted its official count of the dead in Syria after it passed 5,400 in January, saying the situation on the ground had made it impossible to verify the numbers.