BEIRUT (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th August, 2020) The US Caesar sanctions imposed on Syria is not an isolated circumstance but part of a drawn-out strategy to strangulate the Syrian people, President Bashar al-Assad said during an speech to the new parliament on Wednesday.
"The Caesar Act is not a separate or abstract case from the previous stages of the siege, which caused great harm to the Syrian people," Assad said in his speech, which was transmitted by state news agency SANA.
Assad added that self-sufficiency and ramping up domestic production was the only way to counter the economic siege that the country is being subjected to.
A large portion of the speech was allocated to the economic woes that Syria is enduring, saying that that the government had prepared an unconventional way of exiting the crisis but that he could not yet reveal it.
Assad delivered the speech at the swearing-in of the new convocation of the Syrian People's Council, voted for in July.
The so-called US Caesar Act, signed in late 2019 by President Donald Trump, affects almost all areas of Syria's economy, as well as foreign companies and individuals who do businesses with Bashar Assad's government. The law, which also impacts Syria's neighboring middle East countries came into effect on June 17.
