HRW: West should press Syria on human rights

Western nations must press Syria on its human rights record as the country emerges from international isolation, a rights group said Thursday.

"While Syrian officials are chatting up Western diplomats in their gilded front parlors, they're jailing anyone who dares to utter a critical word in their basement prison cells," said Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East director at New York-based Human Rights Watch. (AP)