U.S. closes Syrian embassy as talks fail

BEIRUT -- The United States closed its Syrian embassy and Britain recalled its ambassador to Damascus yesterday in a dramatic new Western push to get President Bashar Assad to leave power as diplomatic efforts to resolve one of the deadliest conflicts of the Arab Spring collapsed.

The moves were a message that Western powers no longer see the point of engaging with Assad as they turn their attention to bolstering Syria's disparate and largely disorganized opposition to form a credible alternative to the current government.

"This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime," British Foreign Secretary William Hague told lawmakers as he recalled his country's ambassador from Syria for consultations on the escalating violence in the country. "There is no way it can recover its credibility internationally," he said.

President Barack Obama said the Syrian leader's departure is only a matter of time, even as the Damascus regime intensified its assault on a revolt that has raged for nearly 11 months.

"The deteriorating security situation that led to the suspension of our diplomatic operations makes clear once more the dangerous path Assad has chosen and the regime's inability to fully control Syria," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.

Robert Ford, the American ambassador, and 17 other officials left Syria and were expected to travel back to the United States. Ford informed Syrian authorities of the decision to leave earlier in the day, State Department officials said.

Even as the United States stepped up pressure on Assad to quit, Obama said a negotiated solution in Syria is possible and it should not be resolved by foreign military intervention.

There are fears that international intervention, akin to the NATO action that helped topple Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, could make the combustible conflict in Syria even worse.

The most serious violence yesterday was reported in Homs, a city so battered that some opposition members have started calling it "the capital of the Syrian revolution." Several neighborhoods in the city, such as Baba Amr, are under the control of rebels.

Regime forces shelled a makeshift medical clinic and residential areas, killing a reported 40 people on the third day of a relentless assault on Homs, activists said. More than a dozen others were reported killed elsewhere.