U.S. defense chief : Fall of regime a matter of time

One of Syria's opposition leaders, Ahmad Ramadan, speaks during a press conference The Syrian National Council, a newly launched anti-regime front, has gained mass support in Syria with many people demanding it be recognised as the country's sole authority, activists said on Monday.
The popular support on Syria's streets for the SNC, forged Sunday in Turkey, comes as US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta predicted it is "a matter of time" before President Bashar al-Assad's regime is ousted by a popular uprising.
"Demonstrations of support" for the SNC were held Sunday in main protest hubs including Hama, Homs, Idlib, Daraa, Deir Ezzor and the province of Damascus, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Protests were also held in the capital's Al-Qadam neighbourhood despite a heavy security presence, the rights watchdog said.
More protests -- dispersed by security force gunfire -- were held on Monday in Douma, Daraa, Idlib and Deir Ezzor, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an anti-regime activist network based inside the country.
The Syrian National Council reunites the forces of the opposition and the peaceful revolution," Paris-based academic Burhan Ghalioun told reporters at Sunday's launch in Istanbul.
Uniting groups across the political spectrum, "it represents the Syrian revolution both inside and outside the country," he said.
"It works to mobilise all categories of people in Syria and give the necessary support for the revolution to progress and realise the aspirations of our people for the overthrow of the regime, its symbols and its head," Ghalioun said.
Videos posted on Facebook page "Syrian Revolution 2011," one of the motors of the protest movement against Assad, showed demonstrators at Zabadani, 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Damascus, chanting their support for the new group: "Syrian National Council, our sole and legitimate representative."
They also demanded that Assad step down.
In Daraa, the southern flashpoint province where the revolt against Assad's regime began in March, protesters carried banners reading: "We support the Syrian National Council, the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian revolution."
Since mid-March, the country has been rocked by an unprecedented pro-democracy protest movement that the Assad regime has sought to crush using deadly force.
More than 2,700 people have been killed in the unrest, according to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
Panetta, speaking in Tel Aviv after meeting his Israeli counterpart, said Assad's days were numbered.
Washington and other foreign capitals, he said, had "made clear Assad should step down."
"While he continues to resist, I think it's very clear that it's a matter of time before that (exit) in fact happens. When it does, we don't know," he said.
The Pentagon chief, in a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, said Assad's regime had lost all credibility through its brutal crackdown on dissent.
"Anytime you kill your own people as indiscriminately as they have over these last number of months, it's pretty clear that they have lost their legitimacy as a government," Panetta said at a news conference with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Assad's regime blames the violence raging for more than six months in Syria on "armed groups."
In Washington, the US Treasury Department moved to block the sale of telecommunications equipment to Syria, the latest in a series of sanctions aimed at isolating Assad's regime.
According to a Treasury document signed on Monday, US firms will now be barred from selling the Syrian government, but not to all private firms, telecoms equipment or technology, "including satellite or terrestrial network connectivity."
On August 17 President Barack Obama signed an executive order authorising sanctions against the Syrian regime because of what the White House termed a "continuing escalation of violence against the people of Syria."