‘Ankara can push OIC to sanction Syrian government’

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

A Syrian National Council (SNC) executive committee member said with the initiative of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) they expect other Muslim countries to impose the sanctions the Arab League and Turkey have imposed against the Syrian regime.
“We would like Turkey to have a more effective role in the OIC and convince other Muslim countries who are members of the OIC to embrace the sanctions that Turkey and the Arab League have imposed already,” SNC executive committee member Ahmed Ramadan told Hürriyet Daily News in an interview.
Ramadan said the sanctions that Turkey has decided to impose on the Syrian regime are both effective and well timed politically and economically to isolate the regime. “We hope the sanctions that Turkey and the Arab League have decided upon will be implemented without any compromise. These countries should not give a chance to delay the tactics of the regime,” Ramadan said. Ramadan said Turkey should take the lead to convince the other Muslim countries to impose sanctions on the Syrian regime.

A driving force
“After the Arab League’s and Turkey’s decisions to impose sanctions, if the OIC also decides to impose new sanctions on the Syrian regime, then this would be a driving force for the U.N. and the whole international community to take more initiative on Syria,” said Ramadan. The secretary-general of the 57-member OIC Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu said Nov. 30 the OIC would try to resolve the political crisis in Syria internally and opposes moves to take the issue to the U.N. Security Council. The world’s largest Islamic body urged Syria Nov. 30 to “immediately stop the use of excessive force” against its citizens to avert the threat of foreign intervention. k HDN