Obama leads diplomatic push against Assad regime

He is the scion of one of the oldest family dictatorships in the Middle East, but, five months after launching a vicious and escalating military crackdown that has killed almost 2,000 of his own people, President Bashar al-Assad's grip on power appears to have been significantly weakened by new sanctions, accompanied by international calls for his departure.

It was a co-ordinated act of diplomatic censure that to human rights activists – and opposition leaders in Syria itself – had been too long in coming. But with statements of condemnation as well as new US sanctions against the ruling regime, Western leaders, led by President Barack Obama, collectively made plain that their patience with Mr Assad was exhausted.

Immediately after the White House issued Mr Obama's statement calling for Mr Assad to go, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took pains to emphasise that the US "understands the strong desire of the Syrian people that no foreign country should intervene in their struggle". But, she added – speaking just days after suggesting that an intervention by the United States would be meaningless – "it is time for Assad to get out of the way".

As Mr Obama signed executive orders significantly extending sanctions, Germany, France and Britain were issuing a statement of their own. "President Assad has lost all legitimacy and can no longer claim to lead the country," the statement from Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron read. "We call on him to face the reality of the complete rejection of his regime by the Syrian people."

The European governments are expected to extend their own sanctions soon. Their statement was matched by similar denunciations from Canada and the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. The UN's Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, was also expected to recommend the referral of the regime to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Earlier yesterday, the UN said in a statement that Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had spoken to Mr Assad to demand the end of all military operations, an ultimatum that Mr Assad had met with the insistence that all such actions had already stopped.

Syrians greeted the news of the international moves with a mixture of scepticism and hope. "I think it was very late," said one activist in Latakia, where about 50 people are estimated to have been killed by the regime in recent days. "There have been massacres going on all around Syria. Why for six months was the world silent about him? It provided time for Assad to suppress the people." But Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled activist, called it a "very significant step". He added: "To have all the leaders at the same time calling on Assad to stand down will encourage more people to demonstrate."

Fawaz Gerges, the director of the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics, described yesterday's events as a "critical moment".

The key factor, he said, would be whether economic sanctions could bring the country's largely silent middle classes in Aleppo and Damascus out on the streets. "There is no return from this," he said. "But the regime will go for broke – it's in an all out war. So while it will undermine their legitimacy it's not a short-term solution."

Washington had held back, officials said, out of deference to Turkey, which has taken the lead in pressuring Mr Assad. However, that effort appeared to have run out of rope on Wednesday when the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he had spoken to Mr Assad this week and sent his foreign minister to Damascus, and yet, "despite all of this, they are continuing to strike civilians".

A British diplomatic source said the trigger to the co-ordinated statements was the decision last week by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait to withdraw their ambassadors from Damascus. "The move by the Arab world was very significant," the source said. "Before that we held off calling for Assad to go because we were conscious that anything we said could have been portrayed by the regime as the West 'ganging up' on the Syrian people. Clearly that is not the case any more."

One day in Syria

Key incidents in the country on 16 August, as documented by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights:

5am-8.30am Machine-gun fire heard in Latakia; two civilians died of wounds sustained the previous day in Homs.

12.30pm Activists in Homs say landline and mobile communications cut off, and gunfire heard.1pm Some 20 armoured military vehicles patrol Homs.

3.15pm News comes through that 120 soldiers have invaded one Homs neighbourhood, arresting tens of people.

8.15pm Five people wounded in shooting by regime forces outside a mosque in Homs.

8.35pm Two killed by snipers in Homs.

8.50pm Civilian killed in Deir al-Zur after security forces open fire on a crowd.