Desertions to lead to Syria regime fall: Clinton

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime will eventually fall when enough soldiers, business leaders and minorities desert him.

"I think the regime will fall... I am not a fortuneteller. I cannot tell you when that will happen," Clinton said in an interview Sunday with Morocco's 2M television channel during a visit to the Moroccan capital Rabat.

"But the Syrian army, which is largely a conscript army, is not going to continue to carry out these brutal assaults on the Syrian people," the chief US diplomat said, according to a transcript of the interview released Monday.

"At some point, the defections will build, there will finally be created enough momentum against the regime from not only the security forces but business leaders, minorities who are worried about what's happening," she said.

"So it will happen. It's just a question of when, and I wish it would happen sooner instead of later so that the killing could stop," Clinton said when asked to elaborate on her remarks in Tunis that Assad would pay a "heavy cost" for defying the world.

Syria is ruled by minority Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the leadership has established close ties with the Christian community, another minority.

Speaking in Rabat on Sunday, Clinton denounced the "brutal attacks" taking place in Syria and said the soldiers who backed Assad were dishonoring themselves.

"The longer you support the regime's campaign of violence against your brothers and sisters, the more it will stain your honor," she said. Those who renounced violence would be viewed as heroes, she added.

Clinton's comments came at the end of a three-day tour of north Africa that took in Tunisia, where the Arab Spring first ignited, as well as Algeria and Morocco.

Her message to all three countries was that Washington was ready to help them on the path of economic and democratic! reform.

But 11 months of popular struggles in Syria have seen increasingly violent crackdowns on protests by Assad's security forces. More than 7,600 people have been killed, rights groups say.