TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — The European Union will freeze the assets of Syria’s central bank at its meeting on Monday, the French foreign minister said Friday, in the latest effort to pressure Syria to halt its bloody crackdown on an 11-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.

Alain Juppe made the announcement at a conference being held in Tunisia for the “Friends of Syria,” in which some 60 countries gathered to call for an end to the fighting in Syria.