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Syria scrambles to build support at home and brining out their own protest babes

NY Times:

With the threat of economic sanctions looming over Syria, officials of the governing Baath Party announced Thursday that they would formally reconsider a decision made 43 years ago that stripped hundreds of thousands of Kurds of their citizenship, and would also discuss the prospect of allowing multiple political parties in future elections.

Officials here have for years been promising to resolve the citizenship issue with the Kurds, and to open up Syria's one-party system. But the timing of the announcement on the official SANA News Service Thursday - no matter how vague and noncommittal - may provide an indication of how officials are hoping to manage a political crisis incited by the investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

"They are trying to create a united front at home in the face of the pressures Syria is facing," said Sami Moubayed, a political analyst and writer based here.

The government had been trying to rally the public by dismissing as political a report by the United Nations prosecutor Detlev Mehlis that named two of Syria's most powerful security officials as suspects in Mr. Hariri's assassination. But all the name-calling did little to calm a jittery public and an increasingly nervous inner circle, which has come to view economic sanctions as virtually inevitable, analysts and people who work with the government said.

...

"Syria can last for about 29 months with its foreign currency reserves," said Abdul Kader I. Husrieh, an economist based in Damascus, though he said it would be devastating to the economy if oil exports were restricted.