SYRIA’S GOVERNMENT HAS endorsed a draft law to allow the formation of political parties other than the country’s ruling Ba’ath party, as part of a series of proposed reforms that have been dismissed as symbolic by the opposition.

A key demand of Syria’s protest movement has been the abolition of Article 8 of the country’s constitution, which names the the Ba’ath party as the only legitimate ruler of Syria. The multi-party bill, which has yet to be passed by parliament, comes after more than four months of unrest and demands for President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

The bill is not likely be presented for debate in parliament until the next session on 7 August.

Syria’s state-run news agency SANA said that the new law, approved late on Sunday, would permit the establishment of any political parties that were not based on religious or tribal lines, and which do not discriminate on the basis of gender or ethnicity.

However, the promises of reform come at the same time as a deadly crackdown on protesters that activists say has killed at least 1,600 people.

The revolt has only grown more defiant in the face of the government response, and protesters have shifted their demands from political change to the outright downfall of the regime.

Assad, who inherited power in 2000 after the death of his father, President Hafez Assad, has made a series of overtures to try to ease the growing outrage. He lifted the decades-old emergency laws that gave the regime a free hand to arrest people without charge, granted Syrian nationality to thousands of Kurds — a long-ostracised minority — and issued several pardons.

But the concessions failed to sap the momentum of the protest movement, which dismissed them as either symbolic or far too late.

As a first step, the protesters are demanding an immediate end to the security crackdown and the release of thousands of people who have been detained in recent months.

The government, however, has shown no signs of letting up in its efforts to crush the uprising.

On Monday, security forces tightened their siege of neighborhoods in central Syria’s city of Homs, sending military reinforcements and cutting mobile and land lines in the Khaldieh and Bayada districts, activists said.

The heavy deployment of troops and army vehicles sparked concerns of renewed military operations. An activist in Homs said there were fears of a large scale military operation to try and force an end to the unrest there before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins next week, during which protests are expected to gain momentum.

Additional reporting by the AP