War Crimes Charges Weighed as Crisis Continues in Syria

The Obama administration, seeking new ways to force the Syrian leadership to halt its violent crackdown on domestic dissent, is examining whether war crimes charges can be brought against President Bashar al-Assad, senior administration officials said.
The officials said the effort was part of a broader government campaign to increase pressure on the Syrian leader as his security forces continue to kill and wound protesters.
One senior administration official disclosed that the United States was examining whether Mr. Assad’s actions constituted war crimes and whether it was possible to seek international legal action against him, his government or Syria’s police forces and military.
The official said the United States was “looking into” whether “there are grounds here for charges related to war crimes, and whether referrals on that are appropriate.”
The official said the administration was also examining “additional economic steps — and one, in particular, has to do with the oil and gas sector in Syria.”
There has been wide anticipation that Mr. Assad would address the issues of internal dissent in a public address.
His crackdown has brought international condemnation of a leadership that has ruled Syria for more than four decades. In advance of any public comments by Mr. Assad on how to deal with dissenters, another senior administration official said, “I think the Syrian people are going to be focusing a lot less on words and a lot more on what is the action, what are the changes that are on the ground.”
That official said the United States was “working unilaterally, regionally and internationally in order to try to build a broad-based approach to how to respond to the need to increase pressure on the regime.”
Britain and France have proposed a Security Council resolution that would criticize Syria but not include military action or sanctions, like those in a resolution on Libya. Even the relatively mild language on Syria faces stiff opposition from Russia, a Syria ally, which has veto power as a permanent Security Council member. In an interview published Monday in the Financial Times, President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia practically ruled out support for such a resolution, saying he fears it “may state one thing but the resulting actions may be quite different.”