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Tens of thousands of Syrians held pro-government rallies on Tuesday as President Bashar al-Assad was expected to address the nation after two weeks of pro-democracy protests in which at least 60 people have died.
Assad, who has been facing the gravest challenge to his 11-year rule after demonstrations in the south spread, could announce a lifting of Syria's decades-old emergency laws.
Protesters at first had restricted their demands to more freedom, but incensed by security forces' crackdown on them, especially in the southern city of Deraa where protests first erupted, they have been demanding the "downfall of the regime."
The calls echo those during the uprisings that toppled veteran leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and also have motivated the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Syrian state television showed people in the Syrian capital Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Hasaka, waving the national flag, pictures of Assad and chanting "God, Syria, Bashar."
"Breaking News: the conspiracy has failed" declared one banner, echoing government accusations that foreign elements and armed gangs were behind the unrest.
"With our blood and our souls we protect our national unity," another said.
Employees and members of unions controlled by Assad's Baath Party, which has been in power for nearly 50 years, said they had been ordered to attend the rallies, where there was a heavy presence of security police.
All gatherings and demonstrations are banned in Syria, a country of 22 million, other than state-sponsored ones.
Media organisations operate in Syria under restrictions. The government has expelled three Reuters journalists in recent days -- its senior foreign correspondent in Damascus and then a two-man television crew who were detained for two days before being deported back to their home base in neighboring Lebanon.
FEARS OF SECTARIAN VIOLENCE
More than two hundred protesters gathered in Deraa chanting for freedom and "God, Syria, and Freedom" and "O Hauran rise up in revolt," a reference to the plateau Deraa lies on.
Deraa is a bastion of tribes belonging to Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, many of whom resent the power and wealth amassed by the elites of the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs. Latakia, a religiously-mixed key port city has also witnessed clashes, raising fears the unrest could take on violent sectarian undertones.
The government has said Syria is the target of a project to sow sectarian strife.
"If things go south in Syria, blood-thirsty sectarian demons risk being unleashed, and the entire region could be consumed in an orgy of violence," wrote Patrick Seale, author of a book on Hafez al-Assad, on the Foreign Policy blog.
Bordered by Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, Syria maintains a strong anti-Israeli position through its alliances with Shi'ite regional heavyweight Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, as well as Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas. It has also reasserted influence in smaller neighbor Lebanon.
Vice President Farouq al-Shara said on Monday the 45-year-old president would give a speech in the next 48 hours that would "assure the people."
Last week Assad made a pledge to study ending emergency law, consider drafting laws on greater political and media freedom, and raise living standards, but increasingly emboldened protesters have not been mollified.
However Syrian officials, rights activists and diplomats doubt Assad, who contained a violent Kurdish uprising in the north in 2004, would completely abolish emergency laws without replacing them with similar legislation. Arab media reports said Assad was, however, likely to sack the current cabinet.
Emergency laws have been used since 1963 to stifle political opposition, justify arbitrary arrest and give free rein to a pervasive security apparatus.
Protesters want political prisoners freed, and to know the fate of tens of thousands who disappeared in the 1980s.
The British-educated president was welcomed as a "reformer" when he replaced his father in 2000. He allowed a short-lived "Damascus Spring" in which he briefly tolerated political debates that openly criticized Syria's autocratic rule, but later cracked down on critics.
WEST'S HANDS TIED
In Deraa, demonstrators have destroyed a statue of Assad's father late President Hafez al-Assad, remembered for his intolerance of dissent.
In 1982 he sent in troops to quell an armed uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing thousands and razing part of the conservative city of Hama to the ground.
Even Hama has seen protests and Assad had to deploy the army for the first time in Latakia, after clashes in which officials said at least 12 people had been killed last week. Assad's crackdown on protests the likes of which would have been unthinkable two months ago in this tightly-controlled country has drawn international condemnation.
But realistically Syria is unlikely to face the kind of foreign intervention seen in Libya.
By cultivating a rapprochement with the West in recent years, while at the same time consolidating its ties with anti-Israeli allies, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, Syria poses a headache for the West which has few options beyond condemning the violence and making calls for political reforms.
France, colonial rulers until 1946, led the rehabilitation of Damascus following the 2005 assassination of Lebanese statesman Rafik al-Hariri which initial investigations implicated Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials.
The United States, long a critic of Syria's support for anti-Israeli militant groups and its involvement in Lebanon, restored full diplomatic relations by sending an ambassador to Damascus in January after a nearly six-year gap.
"Iran is very involved with this regime. Iran would defend it with all means possible," said Antoine Basbous, head of the Paris-based Observatory of Arab countries.
"What's at stake if the Syrian regime falls is not just a matter of Syria internally, the stakes are above all geopolitical ones on regional scale."
Assad, who has been facing the gravest challenge to his 11-year rule after demonstrations in the south spread, could announce a lifting of Syria's decades-old emergency laws.
Protesters at first had restricted their demands to more freedom, but incensed by security forces' crackdown on them, especially in the southern city of Deraa where protests first erupted, they have been demanding the "downfall of the regime."
The calls echo those during the uprisings that toppled veteran leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and also have motivated the rebels fighting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Syrian state television showed people in the Syrian capital Damascus, Aleppo, Hama and Hasaka, waving the national flag, pictures of Assad and chanting "God, Syria, Bashar."
"Breaking News: the conspiracy has failed" declared one banner, echoing government accusations that foreign elements and armed gangs were behind the unrest.
"With our blood and our souls we protect our national unity," another said.
Employees and members of unions controlled by Assad's Baath Party, which has been in power for nearly 50 years, said they had been ordered to attend the rallies, where there was a heavy presence of security police.
All gatherings and demonstrations are banned in Syria, a country of 22 million, other than state-sponsored ones.
Media organisations operate in Syria under restrictions. The government has expelled three Reuters journalists in recent days -- its senior foreign correspondent in Damascus and then a two-man television crew who were detained for two days before being deported back to their home base in neighboring Lebanon.
FEARS OF SECTARIAN VIOLENCE
More than two hundred protesters gathered in Deraa chanting for freedom and "God, Syria, and Freedom" and "O Hauran rise up in revolt," a reference to the plateau Deraa lies on.
Deraa is a bastion of tribes belonging to Syria's Sunni Muslim majority, many of whom resent the power and wealth amassed by the elites of the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs. Latakia, a religiously-mixed key port city has also witnessed clashes, raising fears the unrest could take on violent sectarian undertones.
The government has said Syria is the target of a project to sow sectarian strife.
"If things go south in Syria, blood-thirsty sectarian demons risk being unleashed, and the entire region could be consumed in an orgy of violence," wrote Patrick Seale, author of a book on Hafez al-Assad, on the Foreign Policy blog.
Bordered by Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, Syria maintains a strong anti-Israeli position through its alliances with Shi'ite regional heavyweight Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, as well as Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas. It has also reasserted influence in smaller neighbor Lebanon.
Vice President Farouq al-Shara said on Monday the 45-year-old president would give a speech in the next 48 hours that would "assure the people."
Last week Assad made a pledge to study ending emergency law, consider drafting laws on greater political and media freedom, and raise living standards, but increasingly emboldened protesters have not been mollified.
However Syrian officials, rights activists and diplomats doubt Assad, who contained a violent Kurdish uprising in the north in 2004, would completely abolish emergency laws without replacing them with similar legislation. Arab media reports said Assad was, however, likely to sack the current cabinet.
Emergency laws have been used since 1963 to stifle political opposition, justify arbitrary arrest and give free rein to a pervasive security apparatus.
Protesters want political prisoners freed, and to know the fate of tens of thousands who disappeared in the 1980s.
The British-educated president was welcomed as a "reformer" when he replaced his father in 2000. He allowed a short-lived "Damascus Spring" in which he briefly tolerated political debates that openly criticized Syria's autocratic rule, but later cracked down on critics.
WEST'S HANDS TIED
In Deraa, demonstrators have destroyed a statue of Assad's father late President Hafez al-Assad, remembered for his intolerance of dissent.
In 1982 he sent in troops to quell an armed uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood, killing thousands and razing part of the conservative city of Hama to the ground.
Even Hama has seen protests and Assad had to deploy the army for the first time in Latakia, after clashes in which officials said at least 12 people had been killed last week. Assad's crackdown on protests the likes of which would have been unthinkable two months ago in this tightly-controlled country has drawn international condemnation.
But realistically Syria is unlikely to face the kind of foreign intervention seen in Libya.
By cultivating a rapprochement with the West in recent years, while at the same time consolidating its ties with anti-Israeli allies, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, Syria poses a headache for the West which has few options beyond condemning the violence and making calls for political reforms.
France, colonial rulers until 1946, led the rehabilitation of Damascus following the 2005 assassination of Lebanese statesman Rafik al-Hariri which initial investigations implicated Syrian and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials.
The United States, long a critic of Syria's support for anti-Israeli militant groups and its involvement in Lebanon, restored full diplomatic relations by sending an ambassador to Damascus in January after a nearly six-year gap.
"Iran is very involved with this regime. Iran would defend it with all means possible," said Antoine Basbous, head of the Paris-based Observatory of Arab countries.
"What's at stake if the Syrian regime falls is not just a matter of Syria internally, the stakes are above all geopolitical ones on regional scale."