US President Barack Obama Thursday led a chorus of calls by world leaders for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad to step down, as the UN warned his regime could be guilty of crimes against humanity. Obama also slapped harsh new sanctions on Syria in an executive order that freezes all Syrian government assets and forbids investment and exports to the country. In a statement accompanying the order, Obama said Syria's violent crackdown on anti-regime protests “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” It was the first explicit US call for Assad to resign as global pressure increased on the Syrian leader to end a months-long crackdown on dissent that has killed more than 2,000 people, according to rights activists. “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 said. His call was quickly echoed by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron. “We call on him to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people and to step aside in the best interests of Syria and the unity of its people,” they said in a joint statement. The European Union too joined the groundswell of calls for Assad to go. “The EU notes the complete loss of Bashar Al-Assad's legitimacy in the eyes of the Syrian people and the necessity for him to step aside,” foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement. President Bashar Al-Assad has told UN chief Ban Ki-moon that his army's deadly raids on protest towns have halted ahead of a Security Council meeting on the Syria crisis Thursday. Activists said the situation appeared to be calm, but called for fresh mass protests on Friday after the weekly day of Muslim prayers. Ban spoke to Assad by telephone ahead of the Security Council meeting, at which diplomats in New York said the UN human rights chief was expected to call for the international war crimes court to investigate Assad's deadly crackdown. The secretary general “expressed alarm at the latest reports of continued widespread violations of human rights and excessive use of force by Syrian security forces against civilians across Syria,” deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said. Ban “emphasized that all military operations and mass arrests must cease immediately. President Assad said that the military and police operations had stopped,” according to the spokesman.
