News Analysis: Syrian crisis tests the courage of his autocratic ruler

Joseph Eid/Agency France - Press - Getty ImagesPresident Bashar Al-Assad has left a willingness to adopt major reforms, but time seems to be missing.

Cairo - For years, President Bashar Al-Assad has nurtured a reputation as a leader in a region full of aging of autocrats young and looking to the future, a man who could still reform repressive police state, he inherited from his fathergiven the time and opportunity.

The country of the worsening of the crisis - a bloody battle between police and demonstrators which is closely monitored throughout the world - would seem to be a chance to stave off violence with restraint or even bold reforms, never had a path of his father. But as dead frames and alarming disappearance of dissident figures increase, time seems to be missing. International pressure is growing, and is therefore the indignation has inspired its violent repression.

Mr. Al-Assad could still succeed to quell unrest, diplomats and analysts say. But to do this, it would have to realize the hopes once placed in him when he inherited the power of his father 11 years and to cope with his own family, which controls the Syria brutal security apparatus and seems to be intensely for continued repression. At least 120 people were killed since Friday, the bloodiest day of the insurgency in five weeks.

In the past two days, the mixed signals have emerged on what path he will take. On the one hand, Mr. Assad alluded to a willingness to adopt greater reforms that those announced last week, when it lifted officially entitled the Syria draconian emergency powers. But there has been dark warnings more severe repression as well. In the notoriously opaque political environment of the Syria, it is impossible to say how the President is supported.

"This is the moment of truth for Bashar al-Assad," said Jean-Pierre Filiu, visiting professor at Columbia University who has written extensively on the Syria. "It potentially has the ability to impose reforms on his own Baath party, but he has the will to do so."

The consequences of his decision could be memorable, perhaps more so than in any other revolts yet seen in the Middle East. The Egypt and the Tunisia, the Syria is houses a defensive checkerboard religious and ethnic minorities and many fear that the end of 40 years of the Assad family dynasty could free murders brutal revenge, and the struggles for power. Chaos could easily spill over to the borders of the Syria, to the nearby Lebanon and beyond.

The administration of Obama already accused Iran to help support Mr. Assad. If the Syria fell, it would mark a striking setback to the theocratic regime in Tehran, which has depended on the Syria for its influence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and elsewhere. Yet fatality of the Iran - Israel, the United States and Saudi Arabia - are also deeply disturbed by the prospect of a change of regime in Syria, which could trigger a messy Iraq-style civil conflict.

Even if Mr. Assad survives, unrest is likely to have profound implications for the Middle East policy, say some analysts. "Our policy Syria together for two and a half years has been based on getting the Syria and Israel return to the peace table," said Andrew Tabler, an analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "Now that Bashar accused Israel and the United States of plotting this challenge for him, it will be even more difficult for him to do so."

In a sense, the crisis is now Mr. Assad is the same as that defined his years in power: again and again, he inspired hopes, both at home and abroad, only to disappoint the. Western leaders courted him, in the hope it democratise his country, to make peace with Israel, and stop supporting militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Syrian Liberals saw a brief "Damascus Spring" of greater openness after his accession to the throne, but she soon disappeared. His personal style has helped promote these illusions. Unlike his father stern, Hafez Al-Assad, who took power in a coup in 1970, Bashar al-Assad seems calm and almost meek. He had studied ophthalmology in London and had an elegant woman, British-born. He is fluent in English and French and bed widely.

Even until in recent weeks, "there was a tendency to see as distinct from the regime, he could take his role," said an analyst based in the Syria, who spoke the condition of anonymity. But this patience seems to have made financial demands for reform were transformed into requests to terminate the Assad Government, something of far.

As other autocrats, Mr. Assad may be amortized the reality of the uprising; The Syrian State media have portrayed it as the work of agents provocateurs from Israel, Saudi Arabia and even the Lebanon. Some diplomats who know personally say they believe Mr. Assad understands what is happening - and what to do to stop it - but is too hesitant or too timid, to pay.

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News Analysis: crisis of Portugal, is concerned about "debt trap Europe."

So far the markets took successive of European sovereign financière-troisième crisis in the wake. But many economists are much more alarmées, more, particularly because the formula for rescue of European leaders keep applying to their most indebted Member States shows no sign of work.

The Greece, the Ireland and almost certainly Portugal now have access to hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency European aid to help them avoid default on their debt. But help is really just more loans, and pay the interest rate of the country, if a little less than what the private market would charge, is still excessively high. Their pile of debt becomes larger with each passing day.

Moreover, the price of these loans was a commitment to slash spending much more radical that national leaders would have the desire or political power on their own Government. And for countries which depend heavily on government spending to generate growth, a rapid decrease in expenditures served sustained economic stagnation or recession pure and simple, making every dollar of the debt that much more difficult to repay.

Economists call it "the debt trap." Escape the trap of generally requires the devaluation of the currency, which can only be done between countries using the euro as their common currency, or economic growth strong, that none of the three, or a sort of bankruptcy processrenounce all three. Add to that the probability that the three countries continue to have unstable Governments until they are a way out, and the financial crisis has no end in sight.

"What has been lost in the debate on how countries can restore their finances to a sort of sustainability, is the limit of how much they can reduce in a period of austerity," said Simon Tilford, Chief Economist of the Center for European Reform in London. "There is a limit to how much any Government can reduce the expenses of return and survive politically unless there is a light at the end of the tunnel, a return to economic growth path."

The problems of the weakest countries are not fair debt, but also the lack of competitiveness in Europe and the rest of the world. Without nations restore competitiveness and sell more goods abroad, which can come only through a long-term process to reduce wages and taxes to stimulate investment from the private sector, economists are not optimistic about the prospects for growth of new soon.

The crisis in the Portugal also raises new questions on the issue of whether the European Union will be to tackle the other side of the crisis: banks. Many Greek, Portuguese and Irish account debt of the banks in countries such as the Germany, France and the Netherlands as well as the British, easy. And if these countries cannot pay its debts, they would have to reprogram the, reduce them or by default, causing a major banking crisis in the rest of Europe.

That reckoning would require Governments to ask their taxpayers to recapitalize the banks, which is exactly what politicians are afraid to do so.

"We have a banking crisis, interlaced with a sovereign debt crisis", said Mr. Tilford. "Europe must deal with both, and it must be recognized that creditor countries - especially Germany - banking sector are not now able to manage the restructuring and by default, and that Governments will have money in the banks to recapitalize the."

In essence, Mr. Tilford said, it is the taxpayers of the Greece, the Ireland and Portugal who are bailing out of German taxpayers, the French and the British and applicants - not the reverse. Indebted countries really get rescues, he said, "but high interest rate loans. To be a real rescue plan, he said, should be a default value.

António Nogueira Leite, a former Portuguese Secretary of the Treasury and Advisor of the center-right opposition, said that the rescue plan packages "does not really take into account the arithmetic of the debt." The experience of the Greece and Ireland shows, said, "that once austerity sets, the country does not generate the means to be able to pay the debt already incurred."

The Economist this week, in an article on the problems of the Greece, said: "international action to save the Greece is rather began to paralyse it.".

Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels.

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