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Sanctions disintegrating Syria govt

Egypt recalls ambassador as violence continues

AFP, London
The Syrian economy is being crippled by foreign sanctions and the government is "slowly disintegrating" under anti-regime protests, a leading Syrian businessman told the BBC on Sunday.
Faisal al-Qudsi, the son of a former Syrian president who was heavily involved in the country's economic liberalisation, said sanctions were affecting the entire country, not just President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
But Qudsi said Assad would fight to the end because he and his supporters think there is "a universal conspiracy against the government of Syria".
Human rights groups have put the figure at more than 7,000, while the government says at least 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed combating "armed
gangs and terrorists".
"The apparatus of the government is slowly disintegrating and it's almost non-existent in trouble spots like Homs, Idlib, Deraa," he told the BBC World Service in London.
Qudsi said Iran was sending "quite a lot of cash" to support Syria through Iraq, but it was not enough, adding that most of the top businessmen he knew had left because of fears for their safety.
"With the sanctions on exporting goods and products from Syria to the rest of the world, Syrian products can only be exported to Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon.
"So, effectively the foreign exchange reserves of the central bank have come down from $22 billion (16.7 billion euros) to about $10 billion and it is dwindling very rapidly."
He said the military phase against protesters could only last another six months "because the army is getting tired and will go nowhere".
Meanwhile, activists say government forces continue to build around the city of Homs, with shelling of the district of Baba Amr resuming yesterday, targeting hundreds of opposition fighters holed up there.
Our correspondent, Jim Muir, says human rights groups fear a
massacre there if a full ground assault is launched.
The Sana news agency yesterday reported that gunmen had opened fire on a car carrying two key officials in the northern state of Idlib, prosecutor Nidal Ghazal and judge Mohammed Ziadeh, killing both of them and their driver.