The European Union tightened an arms embargo on Syria and expanded other sanctions yesterday to try to hasten the end of the conflict between President Bashar al-Assad and rebels that is escalating towards civil war.

The new embargo rules require EU countries to search planes and ships, starting from tomorrow, if they suspect they are carrying arms, dual-use goods or equipment used for repression to Syria.

“These sanctions are important because they will allow ships to be examined to see what cargo they’re carrying, and that will prevent, I hope, any arms reaching Syria,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The EU decision sharpens differences with Russia, which has provided the Syrian government with weaponry and has blocked Western moves to get a UN Security Council resolution threatening Syria with sanctions.

All 27 EU countries must enforce the sanctions - including Cyprus, which some Western diplomats suspect is used by Russia as a shipment route to supply arms to Assad. Cypriot President Demetris Christofias has dismissed this idea as “fairy tales”.

Ashton said it would be up to EU governments to implement cargo inspections, which British Foreign Secretary William Hague said should damage Assad’s access to weapons.

“I hope it will mean that the European Union will be more effective together at preventing any flow of arms to the Syrian regime,” he said.

The tighter EU sanctions could also make it more difficult to supply weapons to Assad’s opponents.

The new sanctions include a ban on the Syrian national airline that will prevent the flag carrier landing at EU airports, although it will still be able to fly over EU countries and make emergency stops.

Ministers added 26 people, mostly military officials, to a list of those subject to EU travel bans and asset freezes. The bloc had already imposed sanctions on 49 organisations and 129 people in Syria. Details of these measures were due to be made public today.

With violence escalating, Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said the presence of chemicals weapons in Syria was a major concern.

“The turmoil could also expand to the stocks of chemical weapons,” he said. “The sense of urgency is only on the increase. The stocks of chemical weapons are part of the story.”
Some foreign ministers said the time had come to start thinking about how to help a post-Assad Syria.

“The regime will fall, but it will leave Syria in a difficult situation,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. “We must be ... prepared to help and assist in economic ways ...
We should concentrate more of our attention on the day after.”

Spanish Deputy Foreign Minister Gonzalo de Benito said: “We must talk about the reconstruction of the country because it is easy to imagine the level of destruction there is in the infrastructure, in the Syrian economy as a whole.”

Brussels meanwhile announced it was increasing by 20mn euros ($ 24mn) its emergency aid to Syrian refugees to a total of 63mn euros.

“Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are in a desperate situation,” said the EU’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, Kristalina Georgieva.

While 120,000 refugees from the conflict in Syria have been officially registered, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees believes the number of displaced is 10 times as big.

“One million people may have been forced to flee inside the country since the conflict began,” the UN agency said last week.

Also high in the minds of the foreign ministers was how to prepare for a potential humanitarian crisis on Europe’s doorstep.

Cyprus, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has warned that up to 200,000 foreign nationals may have to be evacuated from Syria, many of them also holding Syrian passports.