Obama, King of Jordan Agree to Mount Pressure on Syria

Local Editor

The US president Barack Obama repeated his call for President Bashar Assad's government to leave power, and said on Tuesday he was looking to increase international pressure on Bashar, urging him to step down.

In Washington on Tuesday after meeting Jordan's King Abdullah, Obama said that "Unfortunately we're continuing to see unacceptable levels of violence inside that country."

The two leaders had held meeting at the White House discussing a range of regional issues including the situation in the region, the peace talks between the Zionist entity and Palestine and the situation in countries like Yemen and Syria, besides Iran.

"We will continue to consult very closely with Jordan to create the kind of international pressure and environment that encourages the current Syrian regime to step aside," he said.

"We talked about the importance of us continuing to consult closely together to encourage the Palestinians and the Israelis to come back to the table and negotiate in a serious fashion a peaceful way forward. And the Jordanians have taken great leadership on this issue, and we very much appreciate their direction on this issue," he said.

"We also talked about a number of regional issues, including Iraq and Iran, but uppermost on our minds right now is the issue of Syria," Obama further added.

Meanwhile, Syria said Tuesday it would not object to extending an Arab League mission to monitor its compliance with a peace plan, but ruled out any deployment of Arab troops as proposed by Qatar to halt 10 months of deadly unrest.

Source: News Agencies