Tunisia calls for Syrian isolation

Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali has called on the international community to follow his country's example by cutting off diplomatic ties with Syria because of its ongoing crackdown on protesters.

On the final day of the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, Jebali said the international community owed it to the Syrian people to show its opposition to the violence perpetrated by government forces.

"The Syrian people do not expect long statements from us today," he said. "They expect deeds, they expect concrete measures."

Tunisia, the first country to overthrow its dictator in the Arab Spring uprisings, said it was expelling Syrian diplomats and withdrawing its recognition of President Bashar al-Assad's government.

Jebali also criticized China and Russia for vetoing a resolution in the UN Security Council that would have condemned the violence and called on Assad to step down, saying the veto was "a right that was misused."

His calls were echoed by Yemeni activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkul Karman, who said Beijing and Moscow "bear the moral and human responsibility for these massacres."

"I urge you in the name of the peaceful rebels to expel Syrian ambassadors from your countries and I urge you to call back your ambassadors in Damascus," Karman told conference delegates. "That is the minimum you can do to punish this regime, and I also urge you to take the necessary measures to protect the Syrian people."

Disagreement on Iran

Meanwhile the subject of Iran also aroused debate on the security conference's panel covering the "new Middle East," as the broad disagreement among the international community becomes clear.

The United States and the EU have imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran, aiming to halt its uranium enrichment program, which the West fears is meant to build a nuclear bomb.

However Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said of the three options the international community is discussing - negotiations, sanctions or military intervention - negotiations were the best route.

"The military option will create a disaster in our region," he said.

Recent media reports have said Israel, Iran's arch-enemy, is contemplating preemptively bombing Iran's nuclear facilities. Israeli officials have declined to comment publicly on their plans, but Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said the risks of new military conflict in the Middle East "would be dwarfed in comparison to the danger of a nuclear Iran."

"One thing is clear," he told Reuters news agency in Munich. "If Iran becomes nuclear, then it's the end of the world order as we know it… This is what we have to think about, and not about what will happen in case some action is being taken."

acb/za (AP, AFP, dpa)