Syria's President Says Govt to Lift Emergency Law within a Week

President Bashar al-Assad said on Saturday the emergency law in force in Syria for nearly 50 years will be abolished within a week, and expressed his sadness at the deaths of protesters.

"The juridical commission on the emergency law has prepared a series of proposals for new legislation, and these proposals will be submitted to the government, which will issue a new law within a week at the most," he said.

The emergency law, in force since 1963, imposes restrictions on public gatherings and movement, authorizes the interrogation of any individual and the monitoring of private communications and imposes media censorship.

In a televised address to the new cabinet recorded earlier in the day, Assad also expressed his sorrow over the deaths of an estimated 200 people killed in a month of protests across Syria demanding greater freedoms.

"We are sad for all the people we have lost and all the people injured, and consider them all martyrs," he said in his address to a new government tasked with launching reforms after protests demanding greater freedoms snowballed.

"The Syrian people are respectable. They love the regime and reject chaos," Assad said, and called for a national dialogue to find the best model that suits the country.

Assad also spoke of what he called the gulf "between citizens and the institutions of the state, a gulf that must quickly be filled."

"Citizens need security and services, but also dignity. We want to engage in dialogue with the unions and with national organizations."

In addition to the emergency law, Assad also addressed the wide range of complaints that have brought people to the streets across Syria for more than a month, such as joblessness, corruption and a crisis in agriculture.

"Corruption is a threat to morality and to the country's potential for development," he said.

On unemployment, which he acknowledged to be high even by Arab standards, he said that "when people feel the horizon is limited, they feel depression; and this depression can lead to despair."

Assad added that the world economic crisis had made the role of the state "more important," emphasizing the need to support the "small entrepreneur and not large business" and to "improve the connection of markets, not only between people but between cities."

Earlier, thousands of people attended the funeral of a man who died after being shot by regime agents in the northwestern coastal city of Banias, witnesses and activists said.

The mourners chanted slogans in favor of greater freedoms and against the ruling Baath party, and some also called for an end to the regime, the sources told Agence France Presse.

About 2,000 women also rallied "in favor of liberty and in homage of the martyr," in the city centre, a human rights activist told AFP.

Prime Minister Adel Safar on Thursday unveiled his new cabinet, which is expected to carry out broad reforms.

On Friday, tens of thousands of people rallied to demand greater freedoms; exactly one month after a rare protest was staged in Damascus calling for the release of political prisoners.

The protests stretched from the key southern town of Daraa, to the predominantly Kurdish north, via the central industrial city of Homs and the coastal cities of Latakia and Banias, activists said.

The official SANA news agency said a policeman who was killed when violence flared during an anti-regime demonstration in Homs would be buried on Saturday.

Banias, home to Sunnis, Alawite Muslims and Christians, is another protest center where government forces had killed at least four people on Sunday.

Another 4,500 people demonstrated in the three Kurdish neighborhoods of Ras al-Ain, Amuda and Derbassiye, near Qamishli, Berro told AFP.

Around 1,000 people held similar protests in the northwestern coastal city of Latakia while in Jobar, north of Damascus, police with batons and tear gas clashed with some 2,000 demonstrators, rights activists said.

A global outcry over deadly crackdowns on month-old, anti-regime demonstrations widened on Friday with the United States and the United Nations renewing calls on Syria to halt the violence.

On Thursday Syria announced an amnesty for scores of prisoners detained in a month of protests. But the Syrian League for Human Rights said on Saturday that "several activists," including prominent pro-democracy writer and journalist, were still behind bars.