Britain Says Syria's Isolation Will Intensify

Syria's isolation will intensify if Damascus fails to stop killing protesters, the British Foreign Office's minister for the Middle East, Alistair Burt, said on Wednesday.

"These killings must stop," Burt told Agence France Presse in Tripoli, where he reopened the British Council which had been closed during the armed revolt against Moammar Gadhafi's regime.

Burt welcomed the Arab League's decision to impose sanctions on the Syrian government.

"The sanctions on Syria by the Arab League are most important. Such sanctions will continue. The isolation of Syria will continue and intensify," he warned.

The minister expressed hope that Russia, allied with Syria since the Soviet era, would also be "encouraged" to back such moves.

The Arab League approved on November 27 an initial wave of sweeping sanctions against Syria's government over its deadly protest crackdown -- the first time the bloc has enforced such punitive measures against a member state.

Measures included an immediate freeze on transactions with Damascus and its central bank and of Syrian regime assets in Arab countries.

Moscow is the main arms supplier to Damascus and stubbornly refuses to join the chorus of condemnation of the crackdown.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, meanwhile, in a U.S. television interview released Wednesday denied ordering the killing of protesters, saying that "only a crazy person" would do so.

Speaking to ABC News, Assad questioned the U.N. death toll of more than 4,000 in the unrest and said most victims were government supporters. He also brushed aside international sanctions and said Syria had launched democratic reforms.

Witnesses and human rights groups say Syrian forces have used intense force and torture to crush the biggest threat to the Assad family's four-decade rule.