Baton Rouge, LA -- (SBWIRE) -- 08/11/2011 -- President Barack Obama is set to call for the first time on Syria's Bashar al-Assad to step down, according to reports on Tuesday night.

Turking Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (right) meets with Syrian President Bashar al- Assad Photo: AP

The announcement will be made this week and will be accompanied by new sanctions by the US Treasury Department targeted at individuals in the regime and Syrian government finances, said CNN.

An administration official did not comment on the report, but said: "We've previously said Syria would be a better place without Assad, that we believe his regime will be left in the past, and that Assad is on his way out. We've also previously indicated that we'd continue to increase pressures, including possible sanctions."

The Obama administration has been criticised for failing to demand Mr Assad's departure earlier, but continued violence committed by the regime against protesters has finally brought a change of approach.

Earlier in the day a spokesman for the State Department conceded that Washington had abandoned it bid to engage Damascus.

"In the case of Syria, the message from 2009 was if you are prepared to be a reformer, if you are prepared to work with us on Middle East peace and other issues we share, we can have a new and different kind of partnership," said Victoria Nuland. But "that is not the path that Assad chose," she added.

Syrian forces killed at least 47 people across the country on Tuesday and moved into a town near the Turkish border.

Mr Assad defiantly declared an unceasing battle against the "terrorist groups". "We will not waver in our pursuit of terrorist groups," Mr Assad told Ahmet Davutoglu, the visiting Turkish foreign minister.

Army tanks and fighting vehicles advanced through deserted streets in both the west and east of Syria, bringing death and destruction to places that had hitherto been spared and inflicting fresh misery on cities still reeling from the onslaught of recent days.

The scale of the military operations suggested that Mr Assad was in no mood to heed the demands of Saudi Arabia and its allies for an immediate halt to the killing of civilians.

With Western pressure yielding few dividends, Syria's regional friends and champions in the wider world have taken it upon themselves to intervene in the worsening crisis.

Turkey sent Mr Davutoglu, to deliver a stern warning that Ankara had "run out of patience" with Mr Assad's government.

In what appeared to be a gesture of defiance, Syrian tanks rolled into the village of Binnish, just 20 miles from the Turkish border, killing at least four people, according to opposition groups.

Turkey became a belated critic of the Syrian crackdown after thousands of civilians escaped onto its soil following an earlier military offensive against border towns and villages. The tales of horror the refugees brought with them did much to galvanise public opinion in Turkey against Mr Assad, leading to pressure on the government to take a firmer stance.

Brazil, India and South Africa, which all helped to scotch Western attempts to secure a United Nations Security Council resolution against Syria, are also to send envoys to Damascus tomorrow to plead for restraint.

Russia, traditionally Syria's most powerful international champion, added its weight to the escalating pressure. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, telephoned his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem yesterday with a plea for the bloodshed to end.

Instead, however, the death toll mounted. Nearly 400 people have been killed since Mr Assad launched a fresh military offensive against opposition strongholds on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan at the beginning of last week. More than 2,000 have died since the uprising began in mid-March.

Deir al-Zor, a tribal city in Syria's sparsely populated east, came under fresh artillery and automatic gunfire as tanks and troops cleared the city of opposition suburb by suburb. At least 17 people were killed yesterday, the third day of operations in the city, opposition groups said.

Syrian state television denied that any tanks were in the city, the country's fifth largest, a claim challenged by amateur video footage showing tanks advancing down empty streets amid heavy bursts of gunfire and the crump of exploding shells.

"The situation is desperate," one Syrian activist who has been in touch with people in the city said. "People are burying their dead in gardens and in small parks because it is too dangerous to go to cemeteries. Snipers are everywhere."

To the west, a new assault was launched on villages close to the Hama, the city that bore the brunt of the Ramadan offensive last week.

By Alex Spillius, Washington

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Investment products described as “guaranteed”, “protected” or “secure” may have to carry an explanation stating exactly what these terms mean, in the latest warning from the Financial Services Authority that financial companies are not properly advertising risk to consumers.

Baton Rouge, LA -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/05/2011 -- Investment products described as "guaranteed", "protected" or "secure" may have to carry an explanation stating exactly what these terms mean, in the latest warning from the Financial Services Authority that financial companies are not properly advertising risk to consumers.

So-called structured products, which offer people exposure to the stock market with some level of protection, were being promoted "without any clear and adequate justification for the descriptions used", the regulator said in a quarterly consultation paper on Monday. It has proposed introducing guidelines that would force financial services companies to explain the use of terms such as "guaranteed" in advertisements or fact sheets.

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Structured products are increasingly being marketed by banks and wealth managers to consumers who are tempted by the headline rates on offer at a time when returns on cash are still close to zero.

Typical products will lock up capital for five years and offer investors a proportion of any return on the stock market over that period. But many "guaranteed" products in fact only protect capital if the stock market does not fall below a certain level over a certain period of time.

The regulator has had the investment products on its radar after a review in 2009 of products backed by Lehman Brothers found that sales advice had been either unclear or misleading in two-thirds of cases.

But sales of structured products have shot up since the credit crunch, with a 48 per cent rise in new sales in 2009 compared with 2008, according to the website Structuredretailproducts.com.

The UK retail market was worth £52bn at the end of 2010, up from £46bn the previous year. The FSA said it had taken steps to introduce the new rules after evidence that its current guidelines, introduced in 2001, were not working.

"We already have a rule that says firms have to be fair, clear and not misleading – but in a lot of cases we're finding that's not working," the FSA said.
Structured products have been behind some of the largest fines imposed by the regulator in recent months, including a £1.4m fine on Norwich & Peterborough Building Society in April for mis-selling the investments and a £700,000 fine on RSM Tenon last year.

Some independent financial advisers have also faced individual fines for failing to explain the risks of the products properly. A consultation on the proposal is open to August 6.

The FSA expects to publish the results of a separate investigation into how structured products are sold and marketed to consumers later this year, which is expected to clamp down on sales practices further.

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Published: June 6 2011 22:59 | Last updated: June 6 2011 22:59

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