Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON — Three years after the Sunni revolt, the United States continues to recognize the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Congressional sources said the administration of President Barack Obama, despite numerous statements, refused to withdraw U.S. recognition of the Assad regime.

The sources said leading members of Congress were urging Obama to end U.S. recognition of Assad as the leader of Syria.

“It is beyond time for the administration to withdraw recognition of the Assad regime in response to the atrocities it is intentionally inflicting upon Syrian civilians,” House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Rep. Ed Royce said.

On March 14, Royce and the committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Eliot Engel, introduced a resolution that called for the end of U.S. recognition of the Assad regime. The resolution also demanded the end of Assad’s attacks on civilians as well as an administration strategy for U.S. engagement in Syria.

For more than a year, Obama refused to demand the ouster of Assad. In
mid-2012, the president said the Syrian ruler must step down, a position
repeated during regime negotiations with the opposition in November 2013.

“This bipartisan resolution helps bring needed attention to the urgent
humanitarian crisis in Syria and the consequences of the mass atrocities
that the Assad regime has committed,” Engel said. “Three years is too long
for anyone to be able withstand this kind of violence.”

[On March 19, the Israel Air Force attacked Syrian military targets in
the aftermath of a bombing of an Israel Army patrol in the Golan Heights.
There were no reports of casualties from the Israeli strike.]

The resolution was introduced as the U.S. intelligence community
acknowledged the erosion of the Sunni revolt. The resolution did not call
for U.S. military help to the opposition.

“[It] urges the administration and allies of the United States to
formally withdraw their recognition of Bashar Assad’s regime as the rightful
government of Syria, unless and until the Assad regime and its supporting
militias discontinue their barbaric slaughter, systematic starvation, and
other grave human rights abuses and are granted full and unfettered access
for deliveries of humanitarian assistance, even as other negotiations with
Assad’s regime may continue,” the resolution said.

  Congressional resolution calls on Obama to withdraw recognition of Assad regime, House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ed Royce, Rep. Eliot Engel