BEIRUT: Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri is urging Arab countries to recognize the Syrian National Council (SNC) as the official representative of the Syrian people, and deny President Bashar Assad political cover for his lethal crackdown against protesters.

“It is time for all those in solidarity with the Syrian people, especially those Arab countries that have exhausted all measures of pressuring the Syrian regime through the Arab League, to take practical steps going beyond condemnation and sanctions and recognize the Syrian National Council as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” Hariri said in a statement Friday.

Hariri has been one of Assad’s harshest critics, voicing his support for the uprising and saying that Assad’s fall was imminent.

In an indirect jab at Russia and China, which last week vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution prepared by the West and several Arab countries that would have condemned Assad’s crackdown on the 10-month-old protests, Hariri said that Assad’s crackdowns benefits from tacit approval and even protection in some quarters.

“Bashar Assad would not have dared to invade Syrian cities and villages with tanks and missiles had he not had the cover enabling him to do that.”

The U.N. estimates that the violence in Syria has killed around 6,000 people.

In Hariri's statement Friday, he said, “The military campaign waged by armed forces belonging to the Syrian regime against civilians in Homs, Zabadani, Deraa and other areas of the popular movements represents a dangerous cycle in a bloody series [of killing] sponsored by international and regional bodies who agreed to give Bashar Assad a chance to quash his people and protect his political system through barbaric means.”

He also called on Syria’s allies to answer the cries of the Syrian people and adopt a historic stance.

“We are confident that the Syrian people will be victorious in the end,” Hariri said.