EU targets Assad's wife
March 23, 2012
European Union foreign ministers approved sanctions against Syria's British-born first lady, Asma al-Assad, along with President Bashar al-Assad's mother, sister and sister-in-law, in Brussels on Friday.
"She is on the list. It's the whole clan," said one EU diplomat.
Ministers also added 12 further Syrians and two companies to a pre-existing EU visa ban and asset freeze list.
The new EU sanctions will send a "very powerful signal to everyone inside the regime that the killing has to stop" and be replaced by a "political process," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said before the vote on sanctions.
"That is the only way [to] prevent the country from descending into a civil war which would have devastating consequences," he warned.
Belarus also sanctioned
Ministers also hit internationally isolated Belarus with new sanctions, blacklisting 29 of the nation's companies and 12 businessmen supporting President Alexander Lukashenko. His regime, long criticized by the international community over its chequered civil liberties record, sparked renewed outrage over the weekend when the state executed two men accused of a metro bombing in Belarus' capital city, Minsk, last year.
Both the Syrian sanctions and those against Belarus will come into force on Saturday, when the full list of the targeted individuals and companies will also be made public.
EU turns up the heat on Iran
Ministers also finalized regulations to apply an oil embargo against Iran from July in response to the country's recalcitrance over its nuclear program. Some exemptions will, nonetheless, apply to the insurance sector, a concession to Asian insurers of Iran's oil tankers, which had opposed the proposal.
A parallel set of EU sanctions on Iran relating to its human rights violations were also extended. Eighteen more officials were added to an asset freeze and travel ban list, and a ban on the export of electronic materials, which could be used to intercept Internet and telephone communications, was approved.
sej/ncy (dpa, Reuters, AP, AFP)