Sarkozy: Assad is a killer, must face world court

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Wednesday that Syria's leader is acting like a murderer and should be sent to the International Criminal Court. Diplomatic efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria are faltering. Russia said Wednesday it is supplying arms to the Syrian government to fend off external threats, while Italy joined a string of countries closing their embassies in Syria to protest the bloodshed. The French leader, whose country was Syria's one-time colonial ruler, urged humanitarian corridors to allow refugees out and aid into the country. "We must obtain humanitarian corridors, and for that we must unblock the Russian veto and Chinese veto" at the U.N. Security Council, Sarkozy told Europe-1 radio. U.N. Security Council members are meeting to decide what to do next to try to stop the violence. Russia, which is Syria's most powerful ally, and China have vetoed two U.S. and European-backed Security Council resolutions which would have condemned authoritarian President Bashar Assad's bloody crackdown, saying they were unbalanced and demanded that only the government stop attacks, not the opposition. "The French army can in no way intervene" in Syria without U.N. backing, Sarkozy said. France has been active in efforts to end fighting in Syria, and was a leading player in the U.N.-mandated, NATO-led airstrike campaign in Libya. Sarkozy reached out to both Assad and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi earlier in his tenure to try get them to cooperate with the international community. But after both leaders responded to uprisings last year with military repression of protesters, Sarkozy abandoned his support for them. The U.N. estimates that more than 7,500 people have been killed since the anti-Assad struggle started in Syria a year ago inspired by Arab Spring uprisings elsewhere. As Assad's forces used deadly force to stop the unrest, protests spread and some Syrians took up arms. Assad "is today behaving like a murderer and will have to answer for himself at the International Criminal Court," Sarkozy said. International envoy Kofi Annan visited Syria over the weekend and was in Turkey on Tuesday to try to find a way to end the violence, but both the Syrian government and the opposition are refusing to talk to one another. Italy said Wednesday it has closed its embassy in Syria and recalled its staff in reaction to continued crackdown on civilians by government troops. The Foreign Ministry reaffirmed "the strongest condemnation of the unacceptable violence by the Syrian regime against its own citizen." Britain, Canada, France, Spain and the United States have each announced the closure of their embassies to protest the crackdown. Sarkozy played down concerns about violence in Libya and the country's direction after Gadhafi's ouster. "A country three times larger than France with 6 million residents, you have to leave it a bit of time. You cannot pass from dictatorship to democracy in 6 months," he said.